Hollywood Actors Archives

Hugh O’Brian

Hugh O’Brien obituary in “The Daily Telegraph”.

Born on April 19, 1923 (some references list 1925), in Rochester, New York, actor Hugh O’Brian had the term “beefcake” written about him during his nascent film years in the early 1950s, but he chose to avoid the obvious typecast as he set up his career. He first attended school at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, then Kemper Military School in Booneville, Missouri. Moving from place to place growing up, he managed to show off his athletic prowess quite early. By the time he graduated from high school, he had lettered in football, basketball, wrestling and track. Originally pursuing law, he dropped out of the University of Cincinnati in 1942 (age 19) and enlisted in the Marine Corps. Upon his discharge he ended up in Los Angeles. He died in September 2016 at the age of 91.

“Daily Telegraph” obituary:

Come Fly With Me, poster, US poster, Pamela Tiffin, Dolores Hart, Lois Nettleton, Hugh O’Brian, Karl Bohm, Karl Malden, 1963. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Hugh O’Brian, who has died aged 91, was one of the first American actors to achieve television celebrity in 1950s Britain as the marshal of Dodge City in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.

More than 200 black-and-white episodes of the series were shown on the fledgling ITV network between 1956 and 1962. Handsome and square-jawed, O’Brian landed the starring title role because he resembled the real Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) as a young lawman in late 19th-century Kansas and later in Tombstone, Arizona.

It was the first television western to be aimed specifically at adults. Series appealing to children such as The Cisco Kid and The Lone Ranger had been scheduled for late afternoon slots. Inspired by the legendary events of the real-life frontier marshal, Earp played in after-dinner prime time and transformed O’Brian into one of television’s first sex symbols.

His distinctive portrayal of what the show’s theme song described as the “brave, courageous and bold” frontier lawman was marked by a black frock coat, a gold brocade waistcoat, string tie and flat-brimmed black hat. Although by modern lights the action is ponderously slow, the series built steadily in the American television ratings, finally ranking as the nation’s fourth most popular programme.

In the course of the series, O’Brian’s Earp encountered such historical figures as John Wesley Hardin, the Thompson Brothers and Doc Holliday, as well as Earp’s brothers Virgil and Morgan. After six seasons, it concluded with an epic five-episode story in which Earp, with the help of his brothers and Doc Holliday, took on Old Man Clanton and the Ten Percent Gang in a final showdown at the OK Corral.

Of Irish, German and French descent, Hugh O’Brian was born Hugh Charles Krampe on April 19 1925 at Rochester, New York. The family moved several times during his childhood to keep pace with his father’s career as a sales executive, but eventually settled in Chicago, where Hugh attended Hirsch High School.

His degree course at the University of Cincinatti was interrupted by the war, and he served in the US Marines, becoming at 18 one of their youngest drill instructors on account of some earlier military training. On demobilisation he had planned to study Law at Yale, but changed his mind after acting with a small theatre group in Los Angeles, stepping in when a friend fell ill. He sold menswear and women’s lingerie, and worked as a dustman, to pay his way through drama school.

Under the stage name Jaffer Gray, he took supporting roles while appearing at a theatre in Santa Barbara, California, but by the time he landed his first film part in 1950 had changed his name to Hugh O’Brian, an accidental mis-spelling of his mother’s maiden name O’Brien. His debut as a polio victim in Never Fear (1950) led to a contract with Universal, for whom he appeared in 18 pictures, including Seminole (1953) and Saskatchewan (1954). When the ABC television network was looking for a star for The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp in 1955, the story consultant Stuart Lake (whose controversial 1931 biography of Earp had inspired the series) recommended O’Brian because of his resemblance to the real-life character.

During the series, O’Brian became adept with Earp’s trademark “Buntline Special” pistols with extended barrels and shoulder stock, which allowed him to fire accurately over long distances. Some experts now think these weapons were a fabrication by the journalist Ned Buntline rather than authenticated historical fact. O’Brian played the last character that his old friend John Wayne ever killed on the screen in Wayne’s final film The Shootist (1976), considering it a great honour, before recreating his Wyatt Earp role for television in Guns of Paradise (1990), The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) and the independent film Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone (1994).

Away from the cameras, he dedicated much of his time to Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), a non-profit youth leadership development programme that enrols 10,000 second-year high school students every year. O’Brian had been inspired in this endeavour in 1958 when he spent nine days visiting the missionary Dr Albert Schweitzer in Africa. Since its inception, more than 355,000 young people in 20 countries have taken part.

He married for the first time in 2006, when he was 81. He and his wife, the former Virginia Barber, his long-standing girlfriend, were serenaded by their close friend, the actress Debbie Reynolds.

Hugh joined a little theater group and a Santa Barbara stock company where he developed his acting chops and slowly built up his résumé. He was discovered for TV by director/actress Ida Lupino which opened the door to his signing with Universal Studios for films. Hugh’s gentlemanly ruggedness, similar to a James Garner or a Gene Barry, was ideal for pictures, and his lean physique and exceptionally photographic mug had the modest, brown-eyed, curly-haired looker plastered all over the movie magazines. He rebelled against the image for the most part and, as a result, his years with Universal were not as fruitful as they could have been. For the duration, he was pretty much confined as a secondary player to standard action pictures such as Red Ball Express(1952), Son of Ali Baba (1952) and Seminole (1953). It was Rock Hudson who earned all of the Universal glamour guy roles and the out-and-out stardom that could easily have been Hugh’s.

In 1954, he left Universal to freelance but did not fare any better until offered the starring role in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955) on TV, a year later. It became a mainstay hit and Hugh an “overnight” star. During his six-year run on the western classic, he managed to show off his singing talents on variety shows and appeared on Broadway. The handsome bachelor remained a durable talent throughout the 60s and 70s with plentiful work on the summer stock stage and on TV, including the series Search(1972), but never got the one role to earn the critical attention he merited.

A sports enthusiast, his hobbies have included sailing, tennis, swimming and long-distance bicycling and his many philanthropic efforts have not gone unrecognized. His proudest achievement is the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), which he founded in 1958 after spending considerable time with Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his clinic in Africa. Struck by the impassioned work being done by Schweitzer, O’Brian set up his own program to help develop young people into future leaders. O’Brian has since been awarded honorary degrees by several prestigious institutions of higher learning. The perennial bachelor finally “settled down” and tied the knot at age 81 with long-time companion Virginia Barber who is close to three decades his junior. They live in his Benedict Canyon home. He is at this time working on an autobiography

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

TCM Overview:

A handsome action star of TV and the occasional feature film, Hugh O’Brian is best recalled for playing the title role in “The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp” (ABC, 1955-61), which was more a serialized drama than a standard Western. He later reprised the role in the 1991 NBC miniseries “Luck of the Draw: The Gambler Returns” and in “Wyatt Earp Returns to Tombstone” (CBS, 1994).

Educated at a military school, O’Brian was reportedly the youngest drill instructor in the history of the Marine Corps when he assumed those duties at age 18. After attending the University of Cincinnati and UCLA, O’Brian broke into films in 1950 in the song-and-dance feature “No Fear” and as a Western desperado in “The Return of Jesse James.” Usually cast in supporting roles, he continued in action films, like “Battle at Apache Pass” (1952) and “The Man From the Alamo” (1953). Voted the most promising male newcomer of 1953 by the Hollywood Foreign Press, O’Brian moved to more substantial roles like the lyricist who wins Mitzi Gaynor’s heart in “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1954) and the antagonist of Native Americans in “White Feather” (1955). He turned to comedy, playing off his good looks (not unlike Rock Hudson), in “Come Fly With Me” (1963) as the object of a flight attendant’s glances on a transatlantic flight. O’Brian was a cowboy hired to create a ranch in Africa in “Africa – Texas Style!” (1967), and, more recently, had a supporting role in “Doing Time on Planet Earth” (1988).

The actor became a bona fide star, however, on the small screen. He began appearing in anthology series in the 50s like “Fireside Theatre” and “The Loretta Young Theatre” before landing his signature role as Earp. O’Brian later appeared on panel shows and in guest shots, returning to the series grind as a secret agent with a transmitter in his ear for constant contact with command central in “Search” (NBC, 1972-73). He continued to make the occasional guest appearance into the 90s on shows such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “L.A. Law.” The actor has also made several TV-movies, ranging from “Wild Women” (ABC, 1970) to the pilot for “Fantasy Island” (ABC, 1977). More recently, he played a member of the establishment in need of Marshall Dillon in “Gunsmoke: The Last Apache” (CBS, 1990).

After he found TV stardom, O’Brian also discovered the theater. He made his Broadway debut in the musical “Destry Rides Again” (1959) and appeared again on Broadway in “First Love” (1963). Equally at home in light comedy or musicals, he headed national tours of “Cactus Flower” (1967-68), “1776” (1972) and “Guys and Dolls” (1979).

Born Hugh Charles Krampe in 1925, O’Brian’s discipline was forged in the military; he became the youngest drill instructor in Marine Corps history at age 17. He stumbled into acting when a lead actor fell ill during a play he was watching, leading to a contract with Universal Pictures.

Television Breakthrough: In 1955, he was cast as the lead in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. It was the first “adult Western”—shifting the genre from simple shoot-’em-ups to complex, character-driven serialized drama.

Film Highlights: While primarily a TV star, he appeared in significant films like There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954) and The Shootist (1976), John Wayne’s final film, where O’Brian notably played the last man “The Duke” ever killed on screen.

The 70s Tech-Hero: He transitioned to the “high-tech” era with the series Search (1972), playing a secret agent equipped with futuristic gadgets (like a miniature ear-transmitter), showcasing his versatility outside the Western genre.

O’Brian’s portrayal of Wyatt Earp was a departure from the rugged, dusty cowboys of the era. He brought a “gentlemanly ruggedness”—often appearing in a tailored black frock coat and a flat-topped hat. Critics of the time noted his stern, cat-like intensity. Unlike many actors who relied on stunt doubles, O’Brian spent over 1,000 hours practicing his draw, eventually becoming one of the fastest in Hollywood history.

While Wyatt Earp made him a superstar, it also proved to be a gilded cage. For much of the 1960s, O’Brian struggled to land roles that offered the same critical weight. Despite his success in musicals (like Broadway’s Destry Rides Again) and light comedy (Twins), the industry largely viewed him through a frontier lens. His performance in Search was an attempt to modernize his image, but the show was short-lived, leaving his cinematic legacy heavily anchored to the 19th century.

Impact on Television Format

O’Brian’s work helped shift television from 30-minute anthology shorts to the hour-long serialized dramas we see today. Wyatt Earp followed a chronological story arc over several years, a rarity in the mid-50s that paved the way for shows like Gunsmoke and eventually modern prestige TV.

The HOBY Legacy

The most significant “critical analysis” of O’Brian’s life isn’t found in his filmography, but in his humanitarian work. After spending nine days with Nobel laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Africa, O’Brian founded HOBY (Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership) in 1958.

Impact: The organization has trained over 500,000 high school sophomores in leadership.

Philosophy: He famously rejected the idea that all people are born with equal opportunity, but believed every person has the “freedom to choose” to be a giver rather than a taker.

“I do NOT believe we are all born equal… but I DO believe every person has the Freedom To Choose.” — Hugh O’Brian

Jordan Christopher (October 23, 1940 – January 21, 1996) was an American actor and singer. He was the lead singer of The Wild Ones, who recorded the original version of the rock classic “Wild Thing” after Christopher had left the band.

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, to Macedonian immigrants Eli and Dorothy Zankoff, he moved at an early age to Akron, where his father ran a downtown bar.

Christopher became interested in singing with the rise of rock & roll, spending much of his time at the music clubs in Akron’s black section. He formed a doo-wop group called the Fascinations, who released unsuccessful singles on several small labels in the early 1960s.

Christopher’s break came when he joined The Wild Ones, the house band at New York’s Peppermint Lounge, as singer and guitarist. After a residency at the Peppermint Lounge of eight months, The Wild Ones were hired to play at Arthur, the Manhattan discothèque operated by Sybil Williams, then recently divorced from Richard Burton. Within a month of meeting, Christopher and Williams – eleven years his senior – began dating and married in 1966. They had a daughter named Amy, and he had a daughter named Jodi from a previous marriage.

Thanks to the publicity Williams received as the ex-wife of Richard Burton, there was great interest in Arthur, and The Wild Ones were able to secure a recording contract with United Artists records, releasing an album, The Arthur Sound. However, Christopher left the band shortly after its release to develop an acting career. Producer Gerry Granahan later commissioned Brill Building songwriter Chip Taylor to write a song specifically for the band. “Wild Thing” – sung by the band’s new lead vocalist, Chuck Alden, not Christopher – was the result.^[1]

Christopher acted in several films including The Fat Spy (1966), Return of the Seven (1966), The Tree (1969), Pigeons (1971), Star 80 (1983), Brainstorm (1983) and That’s Life!(1986). However his most celebrated role was as a dissolute rock star in the cult film Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969), in which he played the male lead opposite Jennifer Jones. He also appeared on Broadway in Sleuth.

Christopher continued to act intermittently, and he worked behind the scenes with his wife in her operation of the New Theatre on 54th Street in New York City and Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, New York .

Christopher died of a heart attack on January 21, 1996.

Edward Winter was a versatile American actor best remembered for his role as Colonel Flagg in TV’s long running “Mash”. He was born in 1937 in Ventura, California. He began his career on Broadway and starred in Cabaret” in 1967 and then later in “Promises, Promises”. His film’s include “Porky’s Two” and “From the Hip”. He died in 2001.

Obituary in “The New York Times”:

dward Winter, a character actor who worked in theater, films and television, died on March 8 in Los Angeles. He was 63 and had Parkinson’s disease.

Mr. Winter began his acting career in 1962 with the San Francisco Actors Workshop and then moved to New York, where he appeared in productions of ”Galileo,” ”Danton’s Death,” ”The Country Wife,” ”The Condemned of Altona” and ”The Caucasian Chalk Circle.”

He made his Broadway debut in the 1966 musical ”Cabaret” as Ernst, and was nominated for a Tony Award as best supporting actor.

Mr. Winter appeared on television as Colonel Flagg in the series ”M*A*S*H.” His film credits included ”A Change of Seasons,” ”The Buddy System” and ”Porky’s II.”

Shirley Temple is regarded as the most popular child actress ever on film. Her films during the Depression in the 1930’s provided light relief to a weary public. Maybe we need her again to-day. She was born in 1928 in Santa Monica, California. Among her best remembered films are “Heidi”, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”, “Little Miss Broaday” and “A Little Princess”. As she matured she film roles became more infrequent although she was very effective in “Since You Went Away” as one of the daughters of Claudette Colbert on the home front. Jennifer Jones was the other. She also starred in John ord’s “Fort Apache” with Henry Fonda. After retiring from film, she entered the world of politics and joined the Republican party. She served as U.S. Ambassador to Ghana from 1974 until 1976 and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1989 till 1992. She died in 2014.

Her obituary in “The Economist”:

THERE had to be a dark side to Shirley Temple’s life. Biographers and interviewers scrabbled around to find it. The adorable dancing, singing, curly-haired moppet, the world’s top-earning star from 1935 to 1938, surely shed tears once the cameras were off. Her little feet surely ached. Perhaps, like the heroine of “Curly Top”, she was marched upstairs to bed afterwards by some thin-lipped harridan, and the lights turned resolutely off.

Not a bit of it. She loved it all, both then and years later, when the cuteness had gone but the dimples remained. Hadn’t her mother pushed her into it? No, just encouraged her, and wrapped her round with affection, including fixing her 56 ringlets every night and gently making her repeat her next day’s lines until sleep crept up on her. Hadn’t she been punished cruelly while making her “Baby Burlesks”, when she was three? Well, she had been sent several times to the punishment box, which was dark and had only a block of ice to sit on. But that taught her discipline so that, by the age of four, she would “always hit the mark”—and, by the age of six, be able to match the great Bill “Bojangles” Robinson tap-for-tap down the grand staircase in “The Little Colonel”.

To some it seemed a stolen childhood, with eight feature films to her name in 1934, her breakthrough year, alone. Not to her, when Twentieth-Century Fox (born out of struggling Fox Studios that year on her glittering name alone) built her a little bungalow on the lot, with a rabbit pen and a swing in a tree. She had a bodyguard and a secretary, who by 1934 had to answer 4,000 fan-letters a week. But whenever she wanted to be a tomboy, she was. In the presidential garden at Hyde Park she hit Eleanor Roosevelt on the rump with her catapult, for which her father spanked her.

The studios were full of friends: Orson Welles, with whom she played croquet, Gary Cooper, who did colouring with her, and the kind camera crews. She loved the strong hands that passed her round like a mascot, and the soft laps on which she was plumped down (J. Edgar Hoover’s being the softest). The miniature costumes thrilled her, especially her sailor outfit in “Captain January”, in which she could sashay and jump even better; as did her miniature Oscar in 1935, the only one ever awarded to somebody so young. Grouchy Graham Greene mocked her as “a complete totsy”, but no one watching her five different expressions while eating a forkful of spinach in “Poor Little Rich Girl” doubted that she could act. She did pathos and fierce determination (jutting out that little chin!), just as well as she did smiles.

Her face was on the Wheaties box. It was also on the special Wheaties blue bowl and pitcher, greeting people at breakfast like a ray of morning sunshine. Advertisers adored her, from General Electric to Lux soap to Packard cars. After “Stand up and Cheer!” in 1934 dolls appeared wearing her polka-dot dress, and after “Bright Eyes” the music for “The Good Ship Lollipop” was on every piano, as well as everyone’s brains: “Where bon-bons play/ On the sunny beach of Peppermint Bay.”

Her parents did not tell her there was a Depression on. They mentioned only good things to her. Franklin Roosevelt declared more than once that “America’s Little Darling” made the country feel better, and that pleased her, because she loved to make people happy. She had no idea why they should be otherwise. Her films were all about the sweet waif bringing grown-ups back together, emptying misers’ pockets and melting frozen hearts. Like the dog star Rin Tin Tin, to whom she gaily compared herself, she was the bounding, unwitting antidote to the bleakness of the times.

A toss of curls

She was as vague about money as any child would, and should, be. Her earnings by 1935 were more than $1,000 (now $17,000) a week—from which she was allowed about $13 a month in pocket money—and by the end of her career had sailed past $3m (now $29m). But when she found out later that her father had taken bad financial advice, and that only $44,000 was left in the trusts, she did not blame him. She remembered the motto about spilt milk, and got on with her life.

Things appeared to dive sharply after 1939, when her teenage face—the darker, straighter hair, the troubled look—failed to be a box-office draw. She missed the lead in “The Wizard of Oz”, too. She shrugged it off; it meant she could go to a proper school for the first time, at Westlake, which was just as exciting as making movies. By 1950 she had stopped making films altogether; well, it was time. She couldn’t do innocence any more, and that was what the world still wanted. Her first husband was a drunk and a disaster, but the marriage brought her “something beautiful”, her daughter Susan. The second marriage, anyway, lasted 55 years. She lost a race for Congress in 1967: but when that door closed another opened, as an ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. Breast cancer was a low point, but she learned to cope with it, and helped others to cope. “I don’t like to do negatives,” she told Michael Parkinson. “There are always pluses to things.”

In the films, her sparkling eyes and chubby open arms included everyone; one toss of her shiny curls was an invitation to fun. Her trademark was, it turned out, that rare thing in the world, and rarer still in Hollywood: a genuine smile of delight.

“The Economist” can also be accessed online here.

Marin Sheen was born in 1940 in Dayton, Ohio. He first came to public attention in the brilliant “Badlands”. His other major film credits include “Da”, “Catholics”, “Gettysburg”, “Apocalypse Now” and “Wall Street”. He had a major success with the long running “The West Wing”. Marftin Sheen is a well-known and respected activist. He is the father of actors Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. He is an Irish citizen.

TCM Overview:

One of the busiest, most conscientious actors who ever worked in Hollywood, Martin Sheen put together a Herculean body of work – though much of it forgettable – that contained enough highlights to consider him to be among the great actors of his generation. After establishing himself as a youth run amok, most notably in “Badlands” (1973), Sheen grew over the years into a patriarchal figure whose rectitude and social responsibility kept with his liberal Catholic activism. A proud family man who saw all four children enter the acting business, with sons Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen enjoying lucrative careers of their own, he was perhaps most noted for his performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s storied “Apocalypse Now” (1979), on which he suffered a near-fatal heart attack while seen onscreen in a drunken, unscripted meltdown the director incorporated into the finished product. But he subdued his rebellious ways with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, while putting his political activism to the fore with an enduring portrayal of an idealistic president on “The West Wing” (NBC, 1999-2006), which allowed him to put his two greatest passions – acting and activism – on full display. …

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Interview on Youtube here.

Peter Brown was born in 1935 in New York City. During his U.S. Army Service in Alaska be became involved in writing and acting. In the late 1950’s he was signed by Warner Brothers on contract and made “Red Nightmare” and “Darby’s Rangers”. His first television series was “Lawman” which ran from 1958 until 1962. He made some films for the Walt Disney Studios and was then given the lead in the popular Western series “Laredo”. He died in 2016.

Hollywood Reporter obituary:

Peter Brown, who starred as the eager young deputy Johnny McKay on the 1958-62 ABC series Lawman, has died. He was 80. Brown, who played a Texas Ranger on NBC’sLaredo, another TV Western, died Monday at his home in Phoenix as a result of Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Kerstin, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In Foxy Brown (1974), the boyishly handsome actor portrayed a bad guy who is castrated by men hired by the revenge-seeking title character (Pam Grier), with his severed genitals being presented to his girlfriend (Kathryn Loder). From 1972-79, Brown played Dr. Greg Peters on NBC’s Days of Our Lives and later worked on other soap operas such as The Young and the Restless, Loving, One Life to Live and The Bold and the Beautiful. On Lawman, one of several series that Warner Bros. had on the air at the time, Brown starred as Johnny, an orphan in the 1880s who gets the job as deputy under Marshal Dan Troop (John Russell) in Laramie, Wyo.

The role “came naturally to me,” he once said. “My character was not a big stretch; he was a pretty nice kid who was adept at what he did and was eager to learn. Johnny liked girls and guns and all the things Peter Brown liked.” Brown returned to the Western genre on the hourlong action comedy Laredo, playing the clever Chad Cooper for two seasons (1965-67). The show’s pilot was an episode of The Virginian.

Born in Manhattan, Brown moved with his family to the West Coast, and he studied acting at UCLA. As the story goes, he met studio chief Jack Warner while working at a gas station, and that led to a contract at Warner Bros. He had small roles in such films at the studio as Too Much, Too Soon (1958), Darby’s Rangers(1958), Onionhead (1958), Marjorie Morningstar (1958) and The Young Philadelphians (1959) before landing his Lawman gig. After leaving Warners, Brown signed with Universal Studios and made three films in 1964: A Tiger Walks, Kitten With a Whip, starring Ann-Margret, and Ride the Wild Surf. Brown also appeared in such films as Summer Magic (1963), Chrome and Hot Leather (1971),Piranha (1972), The Messenger (1986) and The Wedding Planner (2001) and on TV shows including Wagon Train, Mission: Impossible, The Bob Newhart Show, Police Woman, Dallas, Knight Rider and JAG.

Brown married Kerstin, his fifth wife, in 2008. Survivors also include his children Joshua, Matt and Christi, their spouses and three grandchildren.

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

Website on Peter Brown here.

Belita. Obituary in “The Independemt” in 2005.

Belita was a British Olympic figure skater who surprisingfly starred in a few film noirs in Hollywood in the late 1940’s. Belita was born Maria Jepson-Turner in Hampshire in 1923. As wellas ice figure skating, she was a classical trained ballet dancer. Her three film noir movies were “Suspense” in 1946, “The Gangster” and “The Hunted”. In 1953 she appeared in the British made “Never Let Me Go” with Clark Gable and Gene Tierney. She was married to the Irish actor James Kenney. Belita died in France in 2005. Article on Belita by Eddie Mueller here.

The “Independent” obituary by Tom Vallance:

The actress, dancer and ice-skater Belita had the distinction of starring in 1946 in the most expensive film ever made by the “Poverty Row” studio Monogram. It was called Suspense, and its novel mixture of ice-skating and film noir proved enormously popular at the box-office and more than repaid the studio’s investment.

Although the screen’s most famous and successful ice-skating star was undoubtedly Sonja Henie, there was a time in the early Forties when she had two rivals who appeared in more modest productions – Vera Hruba Ralston and Belita. Like Ralston, Belita was more lithe and statuesque than the diminutive Henie, but she won a following with her appearances in such escapist B-movie titles as Silver Skates (1943) and Lady, Let’s Dance (1944). A skilled dancer, too, she later had smaller roles in musicals .

A poster for Gordon Wiles’ 1947 drama ‘The Gangster’ starring Barry Sullivan and Belita. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

Belita’s real name was Gladys Lyne Jepson-Turner and she was born in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, in 1923. She started skating as a child, encouraged by her mother, a former figure-skater, and in 1936 she was a competitor at the Winter Olympics at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria – Henie was the winner, with Belita in 16th place. It was an experience she later recalled as “terrifying”. She told David Jacobs in 1980,

We were woken by the sound of the storm troopers marching, and we were made to do the “Heil Hitler” salute before we worked. Poor little Freddy Tomlin – I don’t know what he said to them but they threw him out in the snow for about two hours, locking the doors of the arena.

In 1937, the 14-year-old starred in the spectacular London show Opera on Ice, and the following year she and her mother, who had separated from Belita’s father, set sail for the United States, where Belita achieved great success as star of the touring revue Ice Capades. She made her screen début in 1941 as a guest skater in Republic’s film version, also titled Ice Capades, which added a slim plot as framework to showcase several of the show’s performers. Among them was Vera Hruba Ralston, who stayed at the studio (and married its boss, Herbert J. Yates).

Belita was given a contract by Monogram, and though her movies had slim plots, the lavish production numbers on ice made them popular fare, and in 1946 she was entrusted with the leading role in Frank Tuttle’s Suspense. “It was the film I most enjoyed making,” she recalled. “It was the first film in which certain camera angles were used, and it was photographed by Karl Struss, who was incredible.”

It was a steamy tale, scripted by Philip Yordan in James Cain fashion, of infidelity, deceit and murder, boosted by lavish skating routines (in the most suspenseful of which, Belita had to jump through a circle of knives). Her skating skill masked any deficiencies as an actress. Her co-star, Barry Sullivan, recalled,

I always had a fondness for Belita because she didn’t know what the fuck was happening! She was a great skater, but acting and particularly filmmaking were totally foreign to her.

The film’s success prompted another thriller, Gordon Miles’s moodily poetic The Gangster (1947) with the same co-stars, after which Belita returned to the UK, where she starred in ice shows including Babes in the Wood on Ice, and White Horse Inn on Ice, with Max Wall. Her film career continued sporadically. She was part of a fine cast in Burgess Meredith’s The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1950), one of the best Simenon adaptations, with Charles Laughton a superb Inspector Maigret.

The spy thriller Never Let Me Go (1953), starring Clark Gable and Gene Tierney, although a poor film, doubtless had pleasant resonances for her because she played a defecting ballerina, and her earliest ambitions had centred on the ballet (she always professed to hate ice-skating). She had further dancing roles in Gene Kelly’s Invitation to the Dance (1953), playing “The Débutante” in the “Ring Around the Rosy” sequence, and (unbilled) in the film version of Cole Porter’s Broadway musical, Silk Stockings (1957), starring Fred Astaire, in which she is part of the ensemble dancing “The Red Blues”.

In March 1957, she opened at the London Coliseum in the starring role in Damn Yankees, the Broadway hit with songs by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. In this reworking of Faust, in which an ageing baseball fan, Joe Hardy, sells his soul to the Devil in order to play baseball and help his favourite team win the World Series, Belita was Lola, the Devil’s assistant sent to earth to seduce Joe. It proved to be a misguided casting move, for Bob Fosse’s quirky choreography was alien to Belita. A few weeks into the run, she was replaced by Elizabeth Seal, whose gamine qualities were more attuned to the Fosse style.

Belita returned to New York to dance in an off-Broadway production of Ulysses in Nightgown (1958). To be in films with Kelly and Astaire, but get to dance with neither of them, plus the débâcle of Damn Yankees, probably contributed towards Belita’s decision to give up show business in 1959, though she made one more film, appearing as herself in Leopoldo Torre-Nillson’s beguiling tale of disaffected youth, La Terraza, in 1964.

She settled with her second husband, the former actor James Berwick, in Fulham, London, where they owned a garden centre, the Crabtree Gardens Nursery. After Berwick’s death in 2000, she retired to the south of France.

Tom Vallance

Mary Badham was born in 1952 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her film career was very brief, but she will be forever remembered for her unforgetable performance as “Scout” the young daughter of Gregory Peck’s “Atticus Finch” in the classic “To Kill A Mockingbird”. Her other film of note is “This Property is Condemned” as the sister of Natalie Wood. Her brother is the director John Badham who directed “Saturday Night Fever” and many othet popular films.

TCM Overview:

With no prior acting experience, Mary Badham won the role of Gregory Peck’s tomboy daughter Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960) over 2000 other applicants. The novice thespian won praise and earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her naturalistic, unaffected performance. Badham only appeared in two other films, as the narrator who recalls the romantic exploits of her older sister (Natalie Wood) in “This Property Is Condemned” and as a girl who assists an heir outwit his murderous relative in and “Let’s Kill Uncle” (both 1966). After a few appearances on TV episodes of shows like “Dr. Kildare” and “Twilight Zone”, she retired from acting and moved to a Virginia farm. Her older brother is director John Badham.

Interview with Mary Badham n “The Daily Telegraph”:

This photograph was taken on the set of Robert Mulligan’s film of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I was 10 years old and played Scout, and Gregory Peck played my father, Atticus Finch. This was an intimate moment when we were just running through lines together between takes. He really guided and encouraged me, not only during the filming of this movie but also throughout my life. I lost both my parents when I was quite young, so he remained a big, big influence in my life until he died in 2003. We were very close and spoke on the phone regularly, even though I acted in only a couple of films after this one. I always called him Atticus and he still called me Scout right up to the end.

This film tells the story of a family who live in a small town. The mother has died and the father looks after his two children on his own. He is a lawyer who is asked to take on the highly controversial case of a young black man who has been accused of raping a white woman. My character, Scout, is a very intelligent, thoughtful child who has to grow up in the real world very quickly.

I hadn’t done any acting before this movie. My mother was a leading lady in a local theatre in Birmingham, Alabama, where I grew up. The theatre director had heard about the castings for To Kill a Mockingbird and told my mother to take me along. I remember going in and talking with the director Mr Mulligan and doing a little something on stage. A lot of the other wannabe actor kids had acts prepared but I just played around. I didn’t have any experience but I was about the right age, size and colouring to pass off as Atticus’s daughter. According to the talent scout, they had seen 4,000 children.

I was pleased to find out I got the part, and happy to go to the film set and see all the movie stars, but my mother guided me and I just trundled through the filming not really understanding what was going on.

The filming took place in California over five months. There was always lots of laughter. Philip Alford, who played my older brother Jem Finch, loved to play chess, so he and Atticus would play together for hours. And Philip and I got on like a real brother and sister. There was a lot of bickering, which in fact translated well on film. He and the other boys on set happily played together but then there was me who wanted to get involved in the fun. They didn’t want me playing with them so they would gang up against me.

When the film came out, I was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. I didn’t win in the end but I was so relieved when Patty Duke won the award for The Miracle Worker because everyone had these wonderful thank-you speeches, and I didn’t have a clue what I was going to say. Atticus won Best Actor, which was just fantastic.

The 50th anniversary Blu-ray edition of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is out now on Universal Pictures UK

June Duprez was a lovely English actress who made some significent films in the 1940’s both in Britain and the U.S. She was born in Teddington, Middlesex in 1918. Her first film was “The Crimson Circle” in 1936. She won acclain for her performance as the Princess in the wonderful “Thief of Bagdad”. Due to the commencement of World War Two, the shooting of the movie was moved from England to Hollywood. June Duprez stayed on in America and made such films as “None but the Lonely Heart” with Cary Grant, “Bombay” with Alan Ladd and “And Then Tey Were None” with Barry Fitzgerald. She retired early from film acting and died in London in 1984.

Gary Brumburgh;s entry:

Glamorous June Duprez was born in Teddington, England, during an air raid on May 14, 1918. Her father, Fred Duprez, was an American vaudevillian who found stage and film work in England. She herself picked up an interest in performing and eventually joined the Coventry Repertory Company to gather the necessary stage experience.

June made her film debut as an extra in 1935. She married at a young age and her career was initially encouraged by her first husband, a Harley Street doctor. However, once she started flirting with stardom, he became increasingly envious and possessive and their marriage fell apart. Her sultry and exotic appearances in such British films as The Spy in Black (1939), The Four Feathers (1939) and, especially, Alexander Korda‘s The Thief of Bagdad (1940) made a star out of her and she was quickly ushered to Hollywood to capitalize on this newly-found fame. Although she stayed in America throughout WWII, both Korda and June’s agent set her price too high–at $50,000 per picture. This pretty much put her out of contention and she found herself working very little in the next few years. Her most notable American picture during that time was None But the Lonely Heart (1944) opposite Cary Grant.

June subsequently left Hollywood in 1946 and took a few roles on the Broadway stage. She retired altogether when she married for a second time in 1948 to a well-to-do sportsman. They had two daughters but divorced in 1965. June lived in Rome for a time, then returned to London to live out the remainder of her life. She died in 1984 at age 66 following an extended illness.

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

The Thief Of Bagdad, poster, US poster art, top: John Justin, June Duprez; bottom: John Justin, Sabu, 1940. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

June Duprez was a British actress whose career followed a familiar but striking arc: a promising rise in late-1930s British cinema, a frustrated and uneven Hollywood period, and then a gradual move away from film into stage and television work. She is best remembered for The Four Feathers and especially The Thief of Bagdad, which made her a star in Britain and briefly gave her international visibility.

Career overview

Duprez began in repertory theatre and made her film debut in the mid-1930s, with early appearances in The Cardinal and The Crimson Circle. Her breakthrough came with The Four Feathers (1939), followed by major visibility in Alexander Korda’s The Thief of Bagdad (1940), which became the defining film of her career.

Korda then pushed her toward Hollywood, but that move did not translate into sustained success. Her asking price was reportedly set too high, which limited opportunities and led to a period of lower-budget or less distinguished roles, including They Raid by Night and Little Tokyo, U.S.A.. She regained some prestige in None But the Lonely Heart (1944), then appeared in And Then There Were None (1945), The Brighton Strangler (1945), and Calcutta(1947), before leaving Hollywood and later doing some Broadway and television work.

Critical analysis

Critically, Duprez is often seen as a performer whose appeal was rooted in beauty, poise, and a certain romantic or exotic screen quality rather than in demonstrable acting range. That image worked extremely well in the fantasy-adventure style of The Thief of Bagdad, where she fit the heightened visual world perfectly.

Her problem was that Hollywood did not consistently know how to use her. The contrast between her star-making British roles and the patchier American assignments suggests that she was more effective in productions that played to elegance, atmosphere, and melodramatic sincerity than in routine studio programming. When cast in stronger material such as None But the Lonely Heart or And Then There Were None, she benefited from better scripts and ensembles, but she still remained a performer more admired for presence than for transformation.

Strengths on screen

She had a strong, memorable screen image, especially in costume and adventure films.
She could project both fragility and allure, which made her effective in romantic or exotic roles.
In ensemble films, she was able to hold her own alongside stronger stars, especially when the part gave her emotional clarity.

Limitations

Her career was shaped by star-making and studio economics, which limited the range of roles she was offered in Hollywood.
She does not appear to have been a highly versatile character actress; instead, she worked best when the role matched a very specific screen persona.
Because her most famous films came early, her career peak was brief and not sustained into later decades.

Overall assessment

June Duprez’s career is best understood as the story of a performer who made a vivid impression in a small number of major films, but whose trajectory was disrupted by the realities of wartime and postwar studio systems. She remains most significant as a British screen presence of the early 1940s, with The Thief of Bagdad standing as the clearest expression of her appeal.

Her Hollywood career declined after 1944 for a mix of studio-system and personal reasons: she lost the momentum that came from wartime stardom, some later films were weaker or less well received, and a poor fit between her image and the roles she was offered limited her chances to reinvent herself.

Main reasons

A key factor was that her image had been built around a very specific kind of glamorous, “mystery woman” appeal, and that persona became harder to sustain once tastes shifted after World War II. In addition, one of her 1944 films, The Hour Before the Dawn, was not a success, and the role drew criticism, which weakened her standing with studios and reviewers.

There were also off-screen complications. Sources note a reputation for being difficult on set, which made her less attractive to studios that wanted reliable contract players. By the late 1940s, those pressures contributed to a sharp drop in major film opportunities.

After 1944

Her career did not end immediately, but it lost its earlier momentum. She continued to work in films and later television, yet never regained the same level of star power she had in the early 1940s

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Hugh O’Brian

Hugh O’Brien obituary in “The Daily Telegraph”.

Jordan Christopher

Edward Winter

Shirley Temple

Martin Sheen

Peter Brown

Belita

Belita. Obituary in “The Independemt” in 2005.

Mary Badham

June Duprez

Career overview

Critical analysis

Strengths on screen

Limitations

Overall assessment

Main reasons

After 1944

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