George Winslow was a child actor who was born in Los Angeles in 1946. He made his debut in 1952 in “Room For One More”. His films include two with Marilyn Monroe, “Monkey Business” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”. His other films include “The Rocket Man” and “Artists and Models” with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. He died in 2015.
“Telegraph” obituary:
George Winslow has died aged 69, was a Hollywood child actor with a dead-pan stare and “Buster Brown” haircut who appeared in several feature films of the 1950s, most notably Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953), in which he played Marilyn Monroe’s precocious young admirer.
Winslow, whose real name was George Wentzlaff and who acquired the nickname “Foghorn” owing to a deep voice which belied his youthful appearance, was seven when he played the part of the pint-sized millionaire Henry Spofford III in Howard Hawks’s perennially popular musical comedy. In one of the funniest scenes in the film Marilyn Monroe, as the gold-digging blonde bombshell Lorelei Lee, is seen trying to squeeze her capacious behind through a porthole, assisted by Winslow, who explains there are two reasons why he has agreed to help: “The first is, I’m too young to be sent to jail. The second is, you’ve got a lot of animal magnetism.’’
In reality, Winslow recalled that of the two leading actresses in the film, he preferred Marilyn’s co-star, Jane Russell, who was willing to play with him when he got bored during shooting. By the age of 12 Winslow’s voice had broken – upwards – and his Hollywood career was over.
He was born on May 3 1946 in Los Angeles, and made his first public appearance aged six on Art Linkletter’s People are Funny radio show, where his bass voice and comic timing made him a hit with listeners. Spotted by Cary Grant, he made his film debut in 1952, co-starring with Grant and Betsy Drake in Norman Taurog’s Room for One More, about a couple with three children who foster two troubled orphans, one played by Winslow.
He appeared with Grant again later the same year as “Little Indian” in Howard Hawks’s Monkey Business (co-starring Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe), and went on to win his only starring role as Gus Jennings, Richard Widmark’s brattish son in Robert Parrish’s My Pal Gus (1952), which won him a Critic’s Award.
After Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, he co-starred in Henry Levin’s Mister Scoutmaster (1953) as a boy scout from the wrong side of the tracks who enjoys verbal jousts with the snobbish television star turned scoutmaster (Clifton Webb), and in Oscar Rudolph’s low-budget comedy The Rocket Man (1954), Winslow played a boy with a ray gun that compels anyone caught in its beam to tell the truth. That and later films such as Artists and Models (1955), An Affair to Remember (1957), and Rock, Pretty Baby (1956) only proved that the appeal of the cute little boy with the big voice was beginning to fade. After making his last screen appearance in Charles F Haas’s Western, Wild Heritage (1958), George Winslow retired from show business, re-adopted his birth name and vanished into anonymity.
After leaving school, he moved to Oregon, where he attended Lewis & Clark College. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam war, then returned to California, where he worked for the US postal service in Sonoma County until his retirement .
He never married, but shared his home with approximately 25 cats.
Debbie Reynolds was born in El Paso, Texas in 1932. Her family moved to California and she began her show business career as a teenager. Her first film was “June Bride” in 1948. She became a very popular MGM contract player during the 1950’s and scored a big success with “Singing In the Rain” with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor. She went on to make “Tammy and the Batchelor” in 1957, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” in 1964 among many others. She is the mother of Carrie Fisher from her marriage to Eddie Fisher. She died in December 2016, just a day after the death of her daughter actress Carrie Fisher.
“Guardian” obituary:
When Debbie Reynolds, wearing a skimpy pink flapper’s dress, burst out of an enormous cake at a Hollywood party in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), she simultaneously burst into screen stardom. In fact, it was the sixth film appearance of Reynolds, who has died aged 84, but her first starring role. The casting of the inexperienced 19-year-old was a risk taken by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, the co-directors of the classic MGM musical about the early days of talkies. The gamble paid off, but not without some sweat and strain.
“There were times when Debbie was more interested in playing the French horn somewhere in the San Fernando Valley or attending a Girl Scout meeting,” Kelly recalled. “She didn’t realise she was a movie star all of a sudden.” Reynolds herself admitted later: “I was so confused. It seemed dumb to me … reporting to the studio at 6am, six days a week and shooting till midnight. I didn’t know anything about show business. “I learned a lot from Gene,” she added. “He is a perfectionist and a disciplinarian – the most exacting director I’ve ever worked for … Every so often, he would yell at me and make me cry. But it took a lot of patience for him to work with someone who had never danced before. It’s amazing that I could keep up with him and Donald O’Connor. This little girl from Burbank sure had a lot of spirit.”
Daughter of Maxene (nee Harmon) and Ray Reynolds, she was born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas. Her father was a railroad mechanic and carpenter, who lost his job at the height of the Great Depression. After living from hand to mouth for a while, the family moved to Burbank, California when her father got a job with the Southern Pacific railroad. While at high school, Reynolds entered and won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. One of the requirements was “talent”, which she fulfilled by lip-syncing to a record of Betty Hutton singing I’m a Square in the Social Circle, which earned her a Warner Bros contract. (It was Jack Warner who gave her the name of Debbie.) But after a bit part in the Bette Davis comedy June Bride (1948), and playing June Haver’s bubbly young sister in The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady (1950), she took up a contract with MGM, where she flourished, on and off, throughout the 50s and early 60s.
Prior to Singin’ in the Rain, Reynolds was noticed, in what amounted to a cameo, lip-syncing I Wanna Be Loved By You to the singer Helen Kane’s voice in Three Little Words (1950). In Two Weeks with Love (1950), as a younger sister again, this time Jane Powell’s, the cute 5 ft 2in Reynolds stopped the show with the 6ft 3in Carleton Carpenter in two numbers: Abba Dabba Honeymoon and Row, Row, Row, with her nifty tap dancing belying her statements of never having danced before Singin’ in the Rain.
Reynolds’s lively opening Charleston number in her breakthrough film has her singing and dancing All I Do Is Dream of You with a dozen other chorus girls; she keeps up brilliantly with Kelly and O’Connor in the cheery matinal greeting Good Mornin’, danced and sung around a living room – even though during some of the more challenging steps, she stands by and lets the two men dance around her – and she is touching in the lyrical duet You Were Meant For Me with Kelly, who switches on coloured lights and a gentle wind machine on a sound stage to create a make-believe atmosphere.
In the plot, a silent screen star, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen, unforgettable), has a risibly squeaky voice for sound movies and, unknown to the public, is dubbed by Kathy Selden (Reynolds). In reality, however, Debbie’s singing voice was dubbed by the uncredited Betty Noyes, and Hagen herself provided the speaking voice for Debbie, dubbing her on screen because Reynolds was then handicapped by what Donen called “that terrible western noise”.
An effervescent Reynolds went on to star in a series of charming youthful musicals, this time using her own pleasant singing voice. I Love Melvin (1953) was one of the best, with Reynolds paired again with O’Connor. The film opens with A Lady Loves, a musical dream sequence in which Debbie sees herself as a big movie star courted by Robert Taylor. This gives her a chance to be classy, in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Later she features in a witty acrobatic number entitled Saturday Afternoon Before the Game in which she is dressed as a ball being tossed around by a football team.
There followed The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, Give a Girl a Break (both 1953), Susan Slept Here, Athena (both 1954), Hit the Deck and The Tender Trap (both 1955). In the latter, a romantic comedy, Frank Sinatra is a confirmed bachelor and Reynolds is determined to trap him into marriage. In the same year, 23-year-old Reynolds married the 27-year-old crooner Eddie Fisher. They became the darlings of the fan magazines, and co-starred in Bundle of Joy (1956), a feeble musical remake of the 1939 Ginger Rogers-David Niven comedy, which capitalised on their personalities as a happy young couple and the rumours of her pregnancy. (Reynolds gave birth to a daughter, Carrie, in October 1956.)
Meanwhile with the film musical in a moribund state, Reynolds showed that she could get by in straight acting roles, the first proof being in The Catered Affair (1956), a slice of Hollywood realism, with Reynolds as the daughter of working-class parents (Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine). This failed at the box office, unlike Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), which was one of Reynolds’s greatest successes, the theme song of which (“I hear the cottonwoods whisp’rin’ above, Tammy! Tammy! Tammy’s in love!”) remained high in the hit parade for months. This entertaining piece of whimsy gave Reynolds, as a backwoods girl in love with a wealthy man (Leslie Nielsen), what was an archetypal role – a naive girl thrust into a sophisticated world … and triumphing.
In 1957, Eddie and Debbie were best man and matron of honour at the wedding in Acapulco of Fisher’s lifelong friend the impresario Mike Todd to Elizabeth Taylor. A little over a year later, Todd was killed in a plane crash, and Taylor sought solace in Fisher’s arms, causing a huge Hollywood scandal. Taylor, who had been cast as the Grieving Widow, now found herself in the role of the Vamp, while Reynolds was widely and sympathetically portrayed as the Wronged Woman. However, the outraged moralistic public was unaware that the Fisher-Reynolds marriage was already in tatters, although they continued to play America’s sweethearts in public, mainly because Debbie was pregnant with their son Todd (named after Mike) and they were worried that divorce would damage their popularity ratings. But divorce was inevitable and, on 12 May 1959, Taylor, who had converted to Judaism when she married Todd, married Fisher at a synagogue in Las Vegas.
Despite being the divorced mother of two small children, Reynolds was never more active. In 1959, she was among the top 10 Hollywood box-office stars and appeared four movies that year: The Mating Game, Say One for Me, The Gazebo and It Started With a Kiss. None were world-beaters, but they got by on her effortless charm.
In November 1960, Reynolds married the millionaire shoe-store magnate Harry Karl, and pursued her career with added vigour, though her roles hardly varied, whether she was playing Fred Astaire’s nubile daughter in The Pleasure of His Company or a feisty young widow with two children in The Second Time Around (both 1961) or a pioneer woman in the sprawling Cinerama western How the West Was Won (1962), in which she is the only character who makes it through from the first reel to the last, ageing from 16 to 90.
In The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), for which she was Oscar-nominated, Reynolds throws herself around energetically in the title role of the backwoods girl (shades of Tammy, but with added robustness) who enters high society and survives the Titanic, displaying everything she had learned from past musicals, especially in the dance numbers Belly Up to the Bar, Boys and I Ain’t Down Yet.
After playing a man resurrected as a woman in the tiresome Goodbye Charlie (1964), and the title role in The Singing Nun (1966), the mawkish biopic of the guitar-strumming Belgian nun who composed the hit song Dominique, she finally managed to bid farewell to her ingenue “tomboy” persona and portray a mature adult in Divorce American Style (1967). A rare Hollywood comedy with teeth, it cast Reynolds and Dick Van Dyke against type as a squabbling couple, who utter not a word as they prepare for bed in the best sequence. “That was a really hard part to get,” Reynolds commented. “The producer didn’t want me. He didn’t think I could play an ordinary married woman. I think he thought I had to be all ‘diva’d up’ and in a musical.”
When Reynolds, now in her mid-30s, saw her film career gradually slowing to a virtual halt, she reinvented herself as a cabaret performer, appearing most frequently on stage in Las Vegas. Reynolds also shifted her attention to US television starting with 18 episodes of The Debbie Reynolds Show (1969-70), a sitcom resembling I Love Lucy, in which she played a suburban housewife with ambitions to become a newspaper reporter. She continued to appear regularly on TV for the next four decades. What’s the Matter With Helen? (1971), a campy murder tale set in 1930s Hollywood in which Reynolds and Shelley Winters run a school for budding Shirley Temples, would be her last feature film for 20 years.
By the early 1970s, her marriage to Karl was heading for the rocks, mainly because of his infidelities but also because he had gambled away both their fortunes. Luckily, Reynolds was still bankable and, immediately after her divorce in 1973, she made her Broadway debut in a revival of the 1919 musical hit Irene. The show, which ran for 18 months, gained Reynolds a Tony nomination, and was the first of several stage musicals she would appear in over the years: Annie Get Your Gun, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Woman of the Year among them.Reynolds returned to the big screen in the 90s, where she showed that she had lost none of her comic timing playing a number of sweet-voiced monster mums, having maintained her doll-like looks. These included Albert Brooks’s Mother (1996), her first leading film role for 27 years, In & Out (1997) and Zack and Reba (1998), as well as appearing in 10 episodes of Will and Grace on TV, portraying Grace’s mother, a would-be star whose propensity for breaking out into show tunes and impressions dismays her daughter. Reynolds was also known as Princess Leia’s mother, after Carrie Fisher found fame in the Star Wars movies Aside from performing, Reynolds had many other interests. In 1991, she bought a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, where she displayed part of her extensive collection of vintage Hollywood props, sets and costumes. But after her marriage to the real-estate developer Richard Hamlett ended in 1996, she was forced to declare bankruptcy the following year. She later reopened her museum in Hollywood. Reynolds was also an indefatigable fund-raiser for The Thalians (a charitable organisation that provides mental health services from pediatrics to geriatrics in Los Angeles).
Carrie Fisher died the day before her mother, after a suspected heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Reynolds is survived by her son, Todd.
Debbie Reynolds (Mary Frances Reynolds), actor and singer, born 1 April 1932; died 28 December 2016
TCM Overview:
Entertainer Debbie Reynolds embodied the cheerful bounce and youthful innocence of the post World War II era, buoying the genre’s goodnatured hokum with her sincere charm and energy. One of a long line of girls-next-door like Doris Day and June Allyson, Reynolds was never as sultry as Day could be, and was more of a showbiz cheerleader and less of a tomboy than either. In her most successful films like “Tammy and the Bachelor” (1957) and “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), she was often cast as a sincere young adult in the throes of puppy love – never the virgin chased by rogues like Day or the placid housewife like Allyson. Her squeaky clean image came in handy when, in the biggest Hollywood scandal of the 1950s, her then-husband, crooner Eddie Fisher, left her and their two children, Carrie and Todd, for sultry screen goddess, Elizabeth Taylor. Not surprisingly, the public was more than on Reynolds’ side as the jilted wife. Once that furor died down, Reynolds was left to reinvent herself. In the late 1960s, when new sexual mores suddenly rendered the docile suburban female image a thing of the past, Reynolds shifted her focus to nightclub and theatrical stages. She was absent from the big screen for decades but settled into a comfortable presence in the American fabric by returning to film in the 1990s with funny mom roles in films like “Mother” (1996) and “In and Out” (1997) and hysterical guest appearances as the over-the-top mother of Grace Adler (Debra Messing) on “Will & Grace” (NBC, 1998-2006). Reynolds brought both self-mocking and nostalgia to these and other well-received comedic outings, using her persona as a perennially perky throwback to mine genuine laughs well into her 70s.
Mary Frances Reynolds was born in El Paso, TX, on April 1, 1932. Her railroad worker father moved the family to Southern California when Reynolds was young, and growing up in Burbank, Reynolds performed with the town symphony and was active in school plays. When she was 16, she was crowned Miss Burbank in a beauty contest and subsequently MGM and Warner Bros. courted her for a movie contract. The latter won out, but Reynolds mostly treaded water there for two years, playing only a modest part in “The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady” (1950). She moved to MGM in 1950 and made an instant impression in small roles in her first two films, impersonating 1920s “boop-oop-a-doop” singer Helen Kane in the biopic “Three Little Words” (195) and teaming with equally cute boy-next-door Carleton Carpenter in “Two Weeks with Love” (1950), which included a high-speed rendition of the novelty song “Aba Daba Honeymoon” that hit No. 3 on the Billboard charts. The studio and directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen responded by casting her in a leading role, complete with star billing, in the brilliant musical, “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952). Her pleasant alto sold several old-time song standards and Reynolds, not a trained hoofer, literally danced her feet raw to keep up buoyantly onscreen with Kelly and Donald O’Connor. Best of all, her acting conveyed the sincerity of the aspiring neophyte that was both the role and the performer. Just like her role in “Singin’ in the Rain,” a star was born.
During her tenure at MGM, Reynolds performed primarily in musicals; none of which approached the landmark status of her first big success. The underrated “Give a Girl a Break” (1953) was full of ideas and energy, but as was typical of MGM and the studio system, “Athena” (1954) and “Hit the Deck” (1955) were too formulaic. The lively and playful comedienne overdid the teen boisterousness in “Susan Slept Here” (1954) but had a more successful foray into romantic comedy with “The Tender Trap” (1955). A standout was her most sober film of the period – one of only two or three dramas she ever acted in – “A Catered Affair” (1956), where Reynolds provided tender and quietly touching work that her sis-boom-ba roles rarely called upon. As the studio system disintegrated, Reynolds turned to freelancing, enjoying a big hit with “Tammy and the Bachelor” (1957), whose theme song, the highly sentimental but equally memorable “Tammy,” gave Reynolds a second smash hit single (five weeks at No. 1). The film also marked one of the occasional “country girl” roles which she would also play in “The Mating Game” (1958). Reynolds had begun appearing on TV by this time, and was a semi-regular on “The Eddie Fisher Show” (NBC, 1953-57), starring the popular crooner Reynolds had wed in 1955. Together, Reynolds and Fisher were second only to Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh as “America’s Sweethearts.”
The first of several unsuccessful marriages showed its sour side in 1958, when Fisher announced that he was leaving Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor, the widow of his recently deceased best friend, producer Mike Todd, who had perished in a plane crash. The attendant public sympathy for Reynolds – now a single mother of two – meshed well with her wholesome screen persona, which had fully matured by the time of “This Happy Feeling” (1958). At the time of the scandal of all scandals, Reynolds ranked as one of the top ten box office stars in both 1959 and 1960. In 1962, she joined the all-star cast of the Oscar-nominated epic “How the West Was Won” and two years later starred in the screen adaptation of the aptly titled musical, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” (1964), one of her best vehicles, and one which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Raising her two children, future director Todd Fisher and future actress and author Carrie Fisher, kept Reynolds busy; her screen career, which relied to some extent on her youthful, girlish qualities, slowly began to decline. Worse, the new frankness in films began to date her image. When she finally did try a Doris Day-style sex farce with “Divorce American Style” (1967) and “How Sweet It Is” (1968), even that vogue was waning. A few TV spots and a first try at a series, “The Debbie Reynolds Show/Debbie” (NBC, 1969-1970) did little to stem the tide. Her last feature acting for over 20 years, though, was striking. “What’s the Matter with Helen?” (1971), a late entry in the often unpleasant “aging female star” horror subgenre, was redeemed by a very offbeat story, Curtis Harrington’s directorial flair, and fine acting.
Effectively out of films before age 40, Reynolds enjoyed smash success on Broadway with a revival of the old musical chestnut “Irene” in 1973, played the London Palladium in a 1975 revue, and polished to a lively sparkle the nightclub talent she had first tested earlier in her career. Live performing kept Reynolds busiest for the next 20 years, though she occasionally surfaced in a the recurring role of the title character’s acerbic mother on the sitcom “Alice” (CBS, 1976-1985) and did likewise on “Jennifer Slept Here” (NBC, 1983-84). She tried her hand at helming another series with the unsuccessful “Aloha Paradise” (ABC, 1981), a “Fantasy Island/Love Boat” rip-off with Reynolds as a female Ricardo Montalban, and enjoyed a feisty role as a woman cop teamed with her son in the TV movie, “Sadie and Son” (CBS, 1987). She also basked in the boom of nostalgia for her studio heyday when she purchased a Las Vegas hotel and casino and added a Hollywood Movie Museum packed with the memorabilia she had been collecting for decades. The largest collection of its kind in the world, Reynolds’ memorabilia included over 40,000 costumes including Dorothy’s ruby slippers and the white dress Marilyn Monroe wore in her infamous 1952 LIFE magazine photo spread. Ever the hard worker, Reynolds performed constantly at her own hotel’s nightclub to make the enterprise fly, and her love of the work and her finely honed presence kept her venture afloat.
After being known for decades as “the mother of Princess Leia” after daughter Carrie struck iconic status with her role in “Star Wars” (1977), Reynolds blithely withstood gossip surrounding her daughter’s 1987 novel, Postcards from the Edge when wags assumed it was actually about their actual relationship. Even Mike Nichols’ 1990 film version made the mother into something of a attention-craving gorgon. Fisher always said it was an homage to her mother, not an exact portrait of their sometimes strained relationship. The ensuing decade saw Reynolds own return to the big screen, first in Oliver Stone’s “Heaven and Earth” (1993). Her renaissance really began when, at her daughter’s suggestion, Albert Brooks cast Reynolds in the title role of his critically acclaimed “Mother” (1996). Reynolds received raves for her rich characterization of a sunny and loving but subtly disapproving and forbidding parent. The widespread attention she received helped pave the way for her casting as Kevin Kline’s mother in “In and Out” (1997). The following year, she starred as a magical matriarch in the Disney Channel Original Movie “Halloweentown” (1998) and went on to make regular guest appearances on the hit sitcom “Will & Grace” as Grace’s highly critical entertainer mother. She worked steadily as a voice actor in family fare, including “The Rugrats” (Nickelodeon, 1991-2004) and “Kim Possible” (Disney Channel, 2002-07) and well past the normal retirement age, Reynolds maintained a busy stage schedule as a song and dance gal on the casino and resort circuit.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
It’s A Date, poster, US poster, Deanna Durbin, 1940. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Deanna Durbin was one of the most popular film stars of the 1940’s and is credited with saving the fortunes of Universal Studios. She was born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1921. She made her first film for that studio “Three Smart Girls” in 1936. Her unique singing voice made her very popular and she had a string of very popular movies over the next dozen years. Some of her movies are “The Amazing Mrs Holliday” in 1943, “Christmas Holiday” and “Up in Central Park” in 1948. That same year she made her final film “For the Love of Mary”. At the age of 27 she retired after her marriage and went to live in France where remained until her death in 2013.
Michael Freedland’s obitury of Deanna Durbinin “The Guardian”:
When a teenage Deanna Durbin appeared on screen in the 1930s, wearing a decorous white dress with her hands clasped together, singing with a bell-like purity, audiences sighed contentedly. And so did film and music executives. In the days when child stars were wholesome, Durbin was everyone’s idea of the perfect girl next door, and she was a huge money-spinner. Audiences flocked to see her musical comedies and, after she had trilled numbers such as It’s Raining Sunbeams (in the film One Hundred Men and a Girl, 1937), Home Sweet Home (in First Love, 1939) and Waltzing in the Clouds (in Spring Parade, 1940), her fans queued to buy the latest record bearing her name.
Durbin, who has died aged 91, was the antithesis of the Hollywood glamour girl – which made her the kind of star that teachers liked to offer as an example to their students. Her films were tailored to fit both her personality, which made the word “vivacious” seem like an understatement, and her singing voice, which was feminine, sweet, mature beyond her years and extraordinarily powerful.
In 1939, Durbin, aged 17, and her fellow child star Mickey Rooney were awarded special Oscars “for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth and, as juvenile players, setting a high standard of ability and achievement”. Ten years and fewer than 20 films later, she suddenly announced her retirement from show business.
She was born Edna Mae Durbin in Winnipeg, Canada. Her parents took her to live in California when she was a baby. From the age of eight she started taking voice lessons and when she was 14 she was recommended to the MGM studio boss Louis B Mayer, who planned to cast her in a biopic of the opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink. She was due to play the diva as a child, but the film was never made.
In those days, there was a way into movies that is no longer available: the studio put her into what was called a “short subject”, and allowed the public to judge. In 1936, audiences saw her in the short Every Sunday and approved; Mayer saw it and did not. Judy Garland was also featured in the film and she and Durbin sang together, but the much more gauche-looking Garland appealed more to the mogul than the prettier Durbin, who he decided was a little too womanly for what he had in min
Mayer let her go, but his notion of box-office poison was another studio’s sweet success. Universal was going broke and the idea of a new star who had two very obvious advantages – she had great talent and came very cheap – was extremely tempting. Universal cast Durbin in a film called Three Smart Girls (1936), about a trio of plucky sisters determined to reunite their estranged parents. Its box-office success is generally held to have been responsible for saving the studio from bankruptcy.
The film, combined with her appearance on Eddie Cantor’s radio show in 1936, announced her as a new star. In the late 1930s and through much of the 40s, Durbin was a top box-office attraction. She was prolific, too: her second film, One Hundred Men and a Girl (with an orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski), was followed by Mad About Music (1938), in which she played a girl with a rich imagination; That Certain Age (1938), co-written byBilly Wilder; and Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), a sequel to her debut feature, with the sisters this time caught up in a romantic conflict. When Durbin had her first screen kiss – with Robert Stack in First Love, a riff on the Cinderella plot – it filled columns in the American newspapers for weeks.
In It’s a Date (1940), Kay Francis and Durbin played mother-and-daughter actors. The New York Times’s reviewer noted a “plot which leaks at every pore” but praised “the young-girlish magic which [Durbin] is able to evoke with her pretty personality and … her phenomenal vocal cords”.
Eventually, the inevitable happened: Durbin and her bosses had different ideas about what represented the right kind of vehicle. She tried very hard to shake off her girl-next-door image with films such as Christmas Holiday (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak and adapted from W Somerset Maugham’s novel: Durbin and her co-star Gene Kelly were both cast against type, she as a nightclub hostess and he as a killer. Lady on a Train (1945), another film noir, also dealt with murder, but Universal did not think that changing Durbin’s personality represented good business.
The conflict led to an unhappiness which was compounded by Durbin’s divorce, in 1943, after two years of marriage to the film executive Vaughn Paul. Her second marriage, to the producer Felix Jackson, also ended in divorce, this time after four years, in 1949. She and Jackson had a daughter, Jessica.
The light comedy For the Love of Mary (1948) was her swansong. The Universal producer Joe Pasternak constantly tried to change her mind, but Durbin told him: “I can’t run around being a Little Miss Fix-It who bursts into song – the highest-paid star with the poorest material.”
In 1950, she married the producer and director Charles David, with whom she had a son, Peter. She then withdrew from show business and lived in France, closely guarding her privacy for decades. In a rare interview, given in 1983 to the film journalist David Shipman, she said: “I did not hate show business. I loved to sing. I was happy on the set. I liked the people with whom I worked and after the nervousness of the first day, I felt completely at ease in front of the camera. I also enjoyed the company of my fellow actors … What I did find difficult was that this acquired maturity had to be hidden under the childlike personality my films and publicity projected on me.”
Charles David died in 1999. On 30 April, via the Deanna Durbin Society, Peter announced that she had died “several days ago”.
• Deanna Durbin (Edna Mae Durbin), singer and actor, born 4 December 1921; died April 2013
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Martin Hewitt was discovered by Franco Zefferelli and starred in “Endless Love” opposite Brooke Shields in 1981. His other films include “Yellowbeard” and “Two Lane Junction”.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Martin Hewitt (born February 19, 1958 in San Jose, California) is an Americanactor. He is best known for his film debut as David Axelrod in Franco Zeffirelli‘s Endless Love (1981), as Dan in Yellowbeard and his role as Chad Douglas Fairchild in Zalman King‘s Two Moon Junction (1988). He also played the role of Michael in the film The Falling (1985). As of 2000, he was living in Los Osos, California developing and selling home inspection software and running his own home inspection business, but has appeared in television shows as recently as 2003. He has a daughter and a son with wife Kerstin.
Project X, poster, US poster, from left: Rita Colton, Jack Lord, Rita Colton, Keith Andes, 1949. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)The Girl Most Likely, poster, (top to bottom), Tommy Noonan, Keith Andes, Cliff Robertson, Jane Powell, 1958. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Blackbeard The Pirate, poster, (poster art), Keith Andes, Robert Newton, Linda Darnell, William Bendix (bottom left), 1952. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Keith Andes was born in 1920 in New Jersey. He had a minor role in 1944 in “Winged Victory” and then three years later was one of Loretta Young’s Swedish brothers in “The Farmer’s Daughter”. In 1952 he appeared with Marilyn onroe and Barbara Stanwyck in “Clash By Night” and “Blackbeard the Pirate” with Robert Newton. In 1963 he starred with Glynis Johns in the television series “Glynis”. His later films included “Tora, Tora, Tora” and “And Justice For All”. Keith Andes died in 2005 at the age of 85.
Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary on Keith Andes:
A blond actor with an impressive physique and brooding good looks, Keith Andes made a strong impression in several films of the early Fifties – he played Marilyn Monroe’s possessive boyfriend in Clash by Night (1952). He also possessed a fine baritone that was heard to advantage on the stage – he was Lucille Ball’s leading man in her only Broadway musical Wildcat (1960) – and he could have been a natural successor to Howard Keel had not Hollywood cut back on musicals in the late Fifties.
Born John Charles Andes in New Jersey in 1920, he graduated from Temple University and worked in radio as an actor and singer prior to joining the Army Air Force. He had wanted to be a pilot but failed cadet training, and when Moss Hart’s morale-boosting play Winged Victory was being produced with an all-servicemen cast, Andes won the role of a flyer in both the play (1943) and the film version that followed in 1944.
Andes had his first starring role on Broadway, by then using the name Keith Andes, in a revival of the operetta The Chocolate Soldier (1947), with choreography by George Balanchine, a new libretto by Guy Bolton and some scene-stealing comedy from Billy Gilbert. Opinions of Andes were varied – the critic George Jean Nathan found him “embarrassing to both song and story” – but he was given the Theatre World Award for the year’s best performance in a musical. The same year, he was seen on screen in The Farmer’s Daughter, which won Loretta Young an Oscar.
He returned to Broadway in 1950 to take over from Alfred Drake as Fred Graham in Kiss, Me, Kate, starring in the show for over a year. He then signed with RKO, and was cast in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night (1952) – Monroe documentaries often include the scene in which he playfully tightens a towel around her throat to signify his jealousy.
Other RKO movies included a spirited swashbuckler, Blackbeard the Pirate (1952), the thriller Split Second (1953), Back from Eternity (1956), as a co-pilot stranded with crash survivors in the jungle, and The Girl Most Likely (1957), a musical remake of the comedy Tom, Dick or Harry, with Jane Powell the bemused heroine trying to choose between three suitors. Andes was the handsome millionaire she almost marries before settling for true love, but though the film was a musical he was given no songs. (His only singing on screen was in the 1955 Universal musical, The Second Greatest Sex, an uninspired attempt to put Lysistrata into a western setting.)
A short spell as a contract player at Universal included roles in Away All Boats (1956), and Interlude (1957, as the doctor boyfriend of June Allyson, patiently waiting for her to end an affair with a married man). His role in Damn Citizen (1958), that of a police chief charged with ridding his department of corruption, was the inspiration for a short-lived television series in which he starred, This Man Dawson (1959). Television had given his singing a showcase when he played Johann Strauss Jnr in The Great Waltz (1955), co-starring Patrice Munsel and Jarmila Novotna. Andes sang duets with both ladies, and in a tour de force conducted the orchestra while singing a vocal version of the Overture to Die Fledermaus.
His most memorable singing role came when Lucille Ball cast him as her leading man in the musical Wildcat (1960). The Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh songs given to Andes included a humorous duet with Ball, “Give a Little Whistle”, and the paean to oil drilling “Corduroy Road”. Happily, these numbers are preserved on the original cast album, although the show closed after six months due to Ball’s health. “Lucy was a hard-working woman,” said Andes:
What she didn’t have, though, was the stage discipline as opposed to television discipline. She was the lead and she needed to pace herself, and she never learned how to do that. The show could have run for three years at least.
While appearing in Wildcat, Andes divorced his first wife and married the actress Shelah Hackett, although that marriage also ended in divorce. He toured in the national production of Man of La Mancha (1968) and although he played guest roles in television series, he had virtually retired by the Seventies.
I was divorced, my kids were grown, and that is when I bought a boat and lived on it and ran charters on it over to Catalina and down to Mexico and back. I just had a ball.
A dedicated weight-lifter who went to the gym five days a week, he was also a chain-smoker, and had been stricken with a series of health problems that led to his apparently committing suicide by asphyxiation.
Tom Vallance
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
1950s and 60s second lead actor Keith Andes fits into the strappingly handsome and virile mold that encompassed the likes of George Nader, Guy Madison, and Jeffrey Hunter. Although he may not be as well remembered as the aforementioned, he managed to maintain a reliable career on radio (from age 12), stage, TV and films for over three decades. Born John Charles Andes on July 12, 1920, in Ocean City, New Jersey, Keith found work on radio singing and acting throughout his high school years. While serving with the Air Force during WWII, he performed in the patriotic 1943 Broadway stage show “Winged Victory” and, after being seen by studio mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, was given a minor part in the film version the following year. Keith returned to Hollywood in the post-war years and won the role of one of Loretta Young‘s brothers (the others being Lex Barker and James Arness) in the classic film The Farmer’s Daughter (1947). His enviable physique and photogenic good looks made the blond looker an obvious choice to continue in both rugged adventures and beefcake drama but his output was fairly minimal. InClash by Night (1952), one of his best roles, he dallied hot and heavy with a youngMarilyn Monroe and, in Blackbeard, the Pirate (1952), he demonstrated some expert swashbuckling skills. Meanwhile on the musical front, Keith proved he had a resilient baritone. He won a Theatre World Award for “The Chocolate Soldier” in 1947 and, subsequently, starred in “Kiss Me Kate” with Anne Jeffreys of TV’s Topper (1953) fame. More notably, he appeared opposite Lucille Ball in her only Broadway musical “Wildcat” in 1960, winding things up playing “Don Quixote” for over 400 performances in “Man of La Mancha” in 1968. Ironically, the movie studios did not take advantage of his musical prowess, appearing in a bland role with Jane Powell and singing one musical number inThe Girl Most Likely (1958). Beside numerous episodic appearances, he appeared in two television series: This Man Dawson (1959) and the sitcom Glynis (1963), the latter starring popular Brit actress Glynis Johns. Both were short-lived. Slowing down by the 1970s, he appeared very infrequently on camera while finding occasional voiceover work. Sadly, his final years were marred by extreme ill health, including bladder cancer, and he committed suicide in his Santa Clarita, California home at age 85.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Elizabeth Allen was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1929.She had a career on stage, screen and television. On the stage in 1965, Stephen Sondheim’s “Di I Hear A Waltz” starred Allen with Sergio Franchi. On screen she starred opposite Charlton Heston in “Diamond Head” and John Wayne in John Ford’s “Donovan’s Reef”. On television she starred in one of the classics of “The Twilight Zone” entitled “The After Hours” with Anne Francis. Elizabeth Allen died in New York aged 77 in 2006.
Her “Guardian” obituary:From The New York Times review of John Ford’s Donovan’s Reef (1963) starring John Wayne: “Ford, best when he’s faced with an unknown talent, brings out the ability of Elizabeth Allen, a darkling beauty. She’s delightful as a Boston ice cube whose melting point is Wayne.”
Elizabeth Allen, who has died aged 77, was not exactly “an unknown talent” when she made Donovan’s Reef but, although she had been in two features previously and three after, it was the only film in which she had a chance to show what she could do.
As Ameilia, the refined daughter of a roughneck doctor, she is more than a match for scallywag Wayne as “Guns” Donovan. Ameilia: “I had the strangest feeling that you were going to kiss me.” Donovan: “What?” Ameilia: “Well, I have been kissed before.” Donovan: (kisses her). Ameilia: “I thought I’d been kissed before.” (Kisses him back.)
Born Elizabeth Ellen Gillease in New Jersey, she had a brief career as a model and singer, before getting the job on TV’s The Jackie Gleason Show in the early 1950s, when she became known as the “away we go” girl, because of the phrase she used when introducing the portly comedian’s skits.
Then, in late 1957, Allen was given her big break by Peter Ustinov, who cast her as the female juvenile lead in his cold-war satire, Romanoff and Juliet. (The part was taken by the very different Sandra Dee in the 1961 film.) After the year’s run on Broadway, she appeared in From the Terrace (1960) as a hedonistic society girl who tries to persuade her friend Joanne Woodward to stray from hubby Paul Newman, believing that everybody sleeps around as if it were a big game.
At the same time, Allen continued her career in television, particularly remembered for the role of a mysterious saleswoman in a store where mannequins come alive in a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone. Then she was back on Broadway as Magda in The Gay Life (1961), an Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz musical based on Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler. Despite having only one number, Come A-Wandering With Me, Allen was nominated for a Tony award.
She would be nominated again four years later for her role as the American spinster finding romance in Venice in Do I Hear a Waltz? (based on Arthur Laurents’ The Time of the Cuckoo), the only collaboration between Richard Rodgers (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), this time singing eight numbers including the delightful title song. (She can still be heard on the original cast album.)
Allen was reunited with Ford for a sexy part in the comic Dodge City sequence, with Jimmy Stewart as Wyatt Earp, in the director’s last Western, Cheyenne Autumn (1966). However, television took up most of her time in the 1960s and 1970s with guest appearances in The Man From UNCLE (as a seductive enemy agent) and Dr Kildare among many others.
The stage continued to attract her with a leading role in Sherry! (1967), a musical version of The Man Who Came to Dinner, which ran just two months but has since gained cult status.
Allen ended her career in 1983, after starring, as elegant as ever, in three daytime television soap operas: as an upper crust hostess in Another World and its spin-off, entitled Texas, and as a selfless doctor in The Guiding Light.
Elizabeth Allen, who married and divorced Baron Carl von Vittinghoff-Schell, was a philanthropist who donated money for animal rights and environmentalist causes. She had no children.
· Elizabeth Allen (Elizabeth Ellen Gillease), actor, born January 25 1929; died September 19 2006
Although David Knight is a U.S. born actor, virtually all his cinema career has been in the British Isles.
Julia-Arnall & David Knight
He was born in 1928 in Niagara Falls. He had lead roles from his first film “The Young Lovers” in 1954 with Odile Versois.
His best film is probably “Lost” in 1955 with Julia Arnall. This film features a wonderful collection of British actors in small parts e.g. Barbara Windsor, Joan Hickson, Shirley Anne Field, Thora Hird, Joan Sims and Marjorie Rhodes.
David Knight’s last UK feature was “Nightmare” in 1964. After a further few years of television work, he returned to theatre work in the U.S.
IMDB entry:
David Knight was born on January 16, 1928 in Niagara Falls, New York, USA as David Stephen Mintz. He is an actor, known for Nightmare (1964), Chance Meeting (1954) andAcross the Bridge (1957). He is married to Wendy McClure. They have two children.
Obituary in “Rundus” in 2020.
On Sunday, December 20, 2020 David Stephen Knight, actor and professor of theatre, loving husband to Wendy McClure Knight, and father of two children passed away at the age of 92. David Knight was born January 16, 1928 in Niagara Falls, New York to parents The Reverend Eugene Mintz and Leticia Knight-Mintz. He grew up in New Jersey and attended college at Syracuse University in New York and Whittier College in California before receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1952.
He was quickly contracted to The Rank Organization and acted in more than 10 movies including The Young Lovers (1954), On Such a Night (1956), Across the Bridge (1957), A Story of David: The Hunted (1960), and Nightmare (1964). He also starred in numerous television shows and theatre productions in London’s famous West End, including starring as Bud Frump in the original London production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” at the Shaftesbury Theatre (1963-1964) and The Lives of Benjamin Franklin (1974). He was a member for the British Actors’ Equity organization in the United Kingdom since the 1950s, and the U.S. Actors Equity Association since the mid-1970s.
David met Scottish dancer and actress Wendy McClure and the two were married on November 25, 1963. The couple had two children, Eugene and Moyra, while living in London. In 1975, during the economic downturn in the United Kingdom, he moved with his family to Winnipeg, Manitoba to teach theater at the University of Manitoba. A year later, in 1976, the family moved to Urbana, Illinois where he was professor of theatre and subsequently became Head of the Theatre Department at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois. There, he partnered with his wife to develop the nationally-ranked professional acting program and the Illinois Repertory Theater where he was Artistic Director.
David and his wife Wendy retired from the university in August 20, 1997 as Professor Emeritus in Theater, and where the David and Wendy Knight undergraduate endowed scholarship remains to assist aspiring acting students. He influenced hundreds of students throughout his tenure, many of whom have highly successful careers in the arts today. After retirement, David and Wendy moved to Westminster, Colorado, where they had previously worked at the University of Colorado Shakespeare Festival. David starred in “Macbeth” and codirected “Comedy of Errors” with Wendy in 1982 and 1983 respectively. In retirement, they traveled extensively, and continued to support the arts by attending the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Central City Opera. They celebrated 57 years of marriage on November 25, 2020.
In addition to being a brilliant actor with a remarkable natural talent, David was a gifted teacher with a powerful work ethic who was dedicated to the craft of acting. In his personal life, he was a loving father, a dedicated husband, a voracious reader, and a leader in his community. He is survived by his wife Wendy, children Eugene Knight (wife Chutima) and Moyra Knight (husband Michael MacLean), grandchildren Ewan and Annabelle MacLean; Jupiter, Joseph, and Jasper Knight, and brother Eugene Mintz.
“For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13
David Selby was born in 1941 in Morganstown, West Virginia. He is best known for his role in the long running television series “Dark Shadows” from 1968 until 1971. On film he has starred with Barbra Streisand in “Up the Sandbox” and with Alec Guinness and Richard Jordan in “Raise the Titanic”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Actor David Selby, highly regarded for his villainous work on both daytime and nighttime soap classics, was born in Morgantown, West Virginia. He attended West Virginia University and graduated with both B.S. and M.A. degrees from West Virginia University, then earned a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Following many years on the stock stage (from 1961), David finally attracted infamous attention when he signed on as Quentin Collins, a werewolf, on the gothic daytime drama “Dark Shadows” in 1968. He inherited heartthrob status briefly with the role and even recorded two songs during the show’s run, “Quentin’s Theme” and “I Wanna Dance With You.” After the series’ demise, he made his movie debut with Night of Dark Shadows (1971), the second film based on the cult series. He broached top film stardom in the early 1970s after co-starring with Barbra Streisand in Up the Sandbox (1972) and Ron Leibman in The Super Cops (1974), and continued his high-profiled pace with New York theatre productions of “The Heiress” (1976), with Jane Alexander and Richard Kiley, and “Eccentricities of a Nightingale” (1976) with Betsy Palmer, but things didn’t quite pan out. In the 1980s, however, steady TV work helped put an extra shot of adrenalin back into David’s career, notably as the cunning Richard Channing on the nighttime soap “Falcon Crest,” a role he played from 1982 until 1990. David has graced most of the popular series over the years including “The Waltons,” “Police Woman,” “Kojak,” “Family,” “Touched by an Angel,” and “Ally McBeal.” He has also appeared sporadically in white-collar film support with roles in Dying Young (1991), White Squall (1996) and Surviving Christmas (2004) to his credit. David continues to perform on stage as well. He portrayed Abraham Lincoln in his own play “Lincoln and James” in 1997 and 1998, and penned the play “Final Assault” which premiered in 2003. He is a staple player in radio drama with the L.A. Theatre Works these days. David and longtime wife Chip have three children.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Craig Stevens had been in films for years when he won widwspread popularity on television in 1958 with his performance in the title role of “Peter Gunn”. His films include “Dive Bomber” in 1941 where he met his wife Alexis Smith, “Since You Went Way” and “The Doughgirls”. Craig Stevens died in 2000. Alexis Smith predeceased him.
His “Telegraph” obituary:
American actor best known for his role as the television detective Peter Gunn
CRAIG STEVENS, who has died aged 81, played the suave private investigator Peter Gunn in the American television series of the same name which began in 1958.
Detective Peter Gunn was one of those lady-killer private eyes of the late 1950s and 1960s who existed in a world of salubrious uptown offices and sleazy night-time jazz clubs. Gunn’s own well-appointed workplace was at 351 Ellis Park Road, Los Angeles, but from time to time he would saunter over to Mother’s jazz club to watch his blonde girlfriend Edie (Lola Albright) take to the stage as resident singer.
Each episode presented Gunn with a client in a tight corner or a crime to solve. His work entailed frequent fights, but the urbane Gunn – often aided by his police lieutenant friend Jacoby – would always be standing at the end, coolly dusting down his Ivy League clothes.
The programme’s director, Blake Edwards, shot the action in a modified film-noir style. Most memorable of all was the jazzy score by Henry Mancini – later to be reincarnated in such films as The Blues Brothers, several television advertisements and the odd pop song.
Peter Gunn, which was considered exceptionally violent for its time, was broadcast on NBC from 1958 to 1960 and on ABC in 1960-61. It then came to Britain where it also proved hugely popular. It did much to launch Blake Edwards’s career, and Mancini’s score resulted in two bestselling albums for RCA, The Music from Peter Gunn and More Music From Peter Gunn.
Craig Stevens was born Gail Shikles Jnr on July 8 1918 at Liberty, Missouri, the son of a school teacher. He read Dentistry at Kansas University before deciding that acting was more for him.
Moving to Hollywood, he trained at Paramount’s acting school, worked at the Pasadena Playhouse and in 1941 signed for Warner Brothers. His first feature film was Dive Bomber, in which he played one of Errol Flynn’s co-pilots.
The film’s leading lady was Alexis Smith, and later that year Stevens was given the romantic lead opposite her as a bridge-builder in Steel Against the Sky. They married three years later. Alexis Smith went on to become a star, while Stevens languished as a dependable support. Nevertheless, the marriage endured happily until her death in 1993.
Stevens’s other credits during the 1940s included God is My Co-Pilot (1945) and Humoresque (1946), in which he was one of the gigolos buzzing around a socialite, Joan Crawford. After The Blues Busters (1950) and Abbott and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1953), he played the boyfriend of Jane Russell in The French Line (1954), and then the trusty sidekick of a town tyrant in the light-hearted western Buchanan Rides Alone (1958).
Although he had by then appeared in 13 films, his casting on television as Peter Gunn was his big break. After that, he played the globe-trotting photo-journalist Mike Strait in 20 episodes of the ATV series Man of the World (1962-63). Also featuring a score by Mancini, the series took Stevens to many colourful corners of the world – from south-east Asia to the Amazon – usually assisted by his svelte sidekick Maggie.
Thereafter, Stevens worked mainly in theatre, often opposite his wife, who had retired from the screen in 1959. He did, however, team up again with Blake Edwards in 1967 to make the film Gunn, and he appeared in Killer Bees (1974). His last film role was in Blake Edwards’s Hollywood satire SOB (1981). From time to time, he appeared on television shows such as Dallas.
Murder Without Tears, poster, US poster art,top left: Joyce Holden; top, second left; Craig Stevens, 1953. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)THE DEADLY MANTIS, bottom from left: Alix Talton, Craig Stevens, 1957
