Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 114 of 120

Anna Kashfi

Anna Kashfi obituary in “The Telegraph” in 1980

It was thought that Anna Kashfi was from India but she was in fact born Joan O’Callaghan in 1934 in Cardiff in Wales. Her entire career was in movies and television shows in Hollywood. Her major films were “The Mountain” in 1955 with Spence Tracy and Robert Wagner, “Cowboy” with Jack Lemmon and Glenn Ford and “Battle Hymn” with Rock Hudson and Martha Hyer. Her career seemed to stall after her short lived marriage to Marlon Brando. She died in 2015 at tyhe age of 80.

Her obituary in the ” Telegraph”:

Anna Kashfi, who has died aged 80, was an actress of exotic appearance who was the first wife of Marlon Brando, and the mother of his first child, Christian; she played “foreigners” in several Hollywood films of the 1950s. Her origins were never clarified beyond doubt: when she was thrust into the spotlight there were suggestions that she had invented her Indian ancestry, with one newspaper offering the theory that she browned her skin by bathing in coffee. She insisted that she was Indian, the daughter of Devi Kashfi, an architect, and a woman called Selma Ghose. But the day after she married Marlon Brando in late 1957 – she wore a sari for the ceremony – one William O’Callaghan from Cardiff and his wife Phoebe emerged claiming to be her parents. Her real name, they said, was not Anna Kashfi but Joan O’Callaghan. The truth may be that, as the actress explained in her memoirs, she was the result of an “unregistered alliance” and was subsequently adopted by O’Callaghan.

Her films included, most notably, her debut The Mountain (1956), a thriller starring Spencer Tracy in which she played a Hindu woman who survives an aeroplane crash in the French Alps. Edward Dmytryk, the director, told reporters at the time that he was aware of Anna Kashfi’s “real” name, but assumed she was Anglo-Indian. It was during production that she met Marlon Brando in the Paramount studio commissary. Recalling the meeting years later, the actress wrote: “The face, with an incipient heaviness about the jawline, reflected a wistfulness, an open sensuality, and an ineffable indifference.” She was pregnant by the time she married the star and they were divorced within two years. Their relationship had been violent and tempestuous while they were together – Anna Kashfi was reported to have thrown a tricycle at Brando – and it remained difficult. For 15 years a painful dispute rumbled on over custody of their son Christian, whom Anna Kashfi preferred to call by his second name Devi. During legal proceedings it was claimed that she had been emotionally unstable and at times reliant on alcohol and barbiturates. Christian was also troubled: he dropped out of school, failed to make a career out of acting, and was sent to prison after shooting dead the boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne. He died at the age of 49 of pneumonia.

Anna Kashfi was born Joan O’Callaghan on September 30 1934 in Darjeeling, where her father was a traffic superintendent on Indian state railways; she was brought up there until she was 13, when the family moved to Cardiff, where William O’Callaghan worked in a factory producing steel. Anna attended St Joseph’s Convent School then the Cardiff School of Art. Early on she had jobs in a butcher’s shop in the city and in an ice cream parlour at Porthcawl. She soon started modelling and in 1952 was spotted by an MGM talent scout. Her flourishing as an actress was brief. After The Mountain she played a Korean woman in Battle Hymn (1957), opposite Rock Hudson as a Christian minister turned fighter pilot; then the daughter of an over-protective Mexican cattle baron whom Jack Lemmon has fallen for in Cowboy (1958); the next year she had a small part in Night of the Quarter Moon. Anna Kashfi published a “tell-all” memoir, Brando for Breakfast, in 1979.

Latterly she lived in California and then in Washington state. In 1974 she married James Hannaford, a salesman. He died in 1986.

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

IMDB mini biography:

Anna Kashfi has appeared in a number of films including The Mountain (1956) (withSpencer Tracy) and Battle Hymn (1957) (with Rock Hudson) but is best known for beingMarlon Brando‘s first wife. Kashfi is often thought of as being Indian but is, in fact, the daughter of a Welsh factory worker, William Callaghan, and simply reinvented herself to increase her screen appeal. She met Brando in 1955 in the Paramount commissary and after an on-off relationship (mainly due to Brando’s relentless womanizing) married him in 1957. (Brando claimed that he married her only because she had become pregnant.) She gave birth in May 1958 to their son, Christian, who became notorious in 1990 for shooting dead Dag Drollet, a crime that earned him a ten-year jail sentence. Kashfi divorced Brando in 1959.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Charles Lee < charleslee@tinyworld.co.uk

Barry Sullivan has starred in over 100 movies in a wide variety of film genre – Westerns, film noir, war movies and melodramas. He was born in 1912 in New York City. He was a very good football player and came into film in 1936 with a short “Strike You’r Out”. His major films include “Suspense” in 1946. “The Gangster”,”Bad Men of Tombstone”, “The Great Gatsby” and “Strategic Air Command”. Barry Sullivan died in 1994.

David Shipman’s “Independent” obituary of Barry Sullivan:

Patrick Barry (Barry Sullivan), actor: born New York City 29 August 1912; married three times (one son, two daughters); died Los Angeles 6 June 1994.

BARRY SULLIVAN redefined the term ‘leading man’, being neither a genuine star, although billed above the title, nor a character actor, since he was seldom called upon to play anyone but himself – nice and reliable, the old standby. There were many others of his generation competing for the same roles – Wendell Corey, with his somewhat charming gloom, the cynical but easygoing Van Heflin, the acquiescent but dangerous Robert Ryan.

Many cinemagoers found the Sullivans and Ryans more rewarding than the bona fide box-office champs but, like them, they could be counted upon when it came to facing up to the great ladies of the screen. Ryan, Corey and Heflin all gave Barbara Stanwyck a run for her money, but Sullivan did no more than hold his own with her. When he threatens her in The Maverick Queen (1956) she taunts him, ‘I did what I had to do to get to the top,’ and he’s soon eating out of her hand, the two of them confronting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Married to her in Jeopardy (1953), he spends the film trapped under a derelict jetty as the tide rises, while she grapples with some weirdos who would rather occupy themselves menacing her.

When faced with Stanwyck’s two contemporaries who also specialised in playing strong, rampaging women – Bette Davis and Joan Crawford – Sullivan stood his ground. Lesser men would have buckled under. Sullivan’s first real starring role was as a corporation attorney, the husband trying to dump Davis in Payment on Demand (1951): she fights back, but even before she realises that it is all her doing we know he is never going to win. Married to Crawford (‘Any man’s my man because I want him to be’) in Queen Bee (1955), he is not the only member of the cast who wants to murder her; but her death at the end is not entirely his fault.

Sullivan was the husband of the equally splendiferous Loretta Young in Cause for Alarm (1950), his strongest study in villainy, so insanely jealous of her that he sets her up for a murder rap; and he was an ambitious Hollywood director, wanting to make Lana Turner’s next movie, in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952).

There were quieter times: psychoanalysing Ginger Rogers in Lady in the Dark (1944), his third feature after seven years of supporting roles on the Broadway stage; engaged to his factory-owner boss, played by Young, in And Now Tomorrow; engaged again in a remake of the old farce Getting Gertie’s Garter (1945), this time to Marie McDonald, who wants that eponymous article back before he finds out about it; The Great Gatsby (1949), probably the best (the first is lost) of the three film versions, as Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband; and A Life of her Own (1950), as a playboy ill-treating Ann Dvorak, the pathetic friend of the heroine, played by Turner.

This last was made for MGM, to whom Sullivan had moved after five years with Paramount; but MGM weren’t quite certain what to do with him either. The Three Guys Named Mike (1951) were Van Johnson, Howard Keel and Sullivan, all competing for Jane Wyman. Although it is Keel’s film by sheer dint of personality, it is obvious that Johnson will get Wyman. Sullivan, as an advertising executive, got nowhere with the film or the girl, but MGM looked more kindly upon him after watching him trade insults with Davis in Payment on Demand, on loan to RKO. He returned to RKO to support another of the screen’s great ladies, Claudette Colbert, in Texas Lady (1955) – and support in every sense, as fellow-gambler, lover and henchman. Westerns then were one of the last refuges of fading stars, and Sullivan made several in the late Fifties, including another with Stanwyck, Forty Guns (1957).

Sullivan’s debut on television (in 1955) was prestigious, when he and Lloyd Nolan repeated their Broadway performances in the Pulitzer prize-winning The ‘Caine’ Mutiny Court Martial, adapted by Herman Wouk from his own best- selling novel. He appeared regularly on the small screen, including several series, A Man Called X (1955-56), Harbourmaster (1957), The Tall Man (1960-61) and The Road West (1966). He continued to be seen in movies for the cinema, looking increasingly distinguished, even as most of them were going in the other direction. He invariably played diplomats, politicians or senior officers – always with discretion and candour, but often with too little screen time to make his presence felt. One exception was Earthquake (1974), in which he plays the head of the seismological institute who refuses to believe the warnings of his assistant.

His last considerable movie role was in 1961, with another of the leading female stars of that period, Olivia de Havilland, in The Light in the Piazza. She played the mother of Yvette Mimieux, whom she was hoping to marry to a wealthy young Italian (George Hamilton). Sullivan played her husband, breezing into the film halfway through, determined that they shouldn’t leave their hotel room until they had enjoyed themselves. It was rare for movies to imply that hotel rooms were used for such purposes; and unique to suggest that middle-aged people ever did such things in the first place

Kitty Kallen was born in 1921 in Philadelphia. She was one of the top vocalists during the big band era and sang with the Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey orchestras. Her biggest top ten hit in the 1950’s was “Little Things Mean A Lot”. Her films include “The Second Greatest Sex” in 1955 with George Nader and Jeanne Crain. “Wikipedia” link here.

Anna Sten was hailed as a successor to Greta Garbo. It did not happen but she was a good actress and her Hollywood films are worth checking out. She was born in the Ukraine in 1908. She made some German silent films and made a smoth transition to sound with 1931’s “Trapeze” and “The Brothers Karamazov” which were seen by the U.S. producer Samuel Goldwyn. He brought Ms Sten to Hollywood where she made 1934 “We Live Again” with Fredric March and “The Wedding Night” opposite Gary Cooper.When the movies did not prove successful at the box office, Goldwyn cancelled her contract. She continued to make films throught the 1940’s but often in supporting roles. Her husband was a very successful American producer Eugene Frenke. Anna Sten died in New York in 1993 at the age of 84.

Her “Independent” obituary:

GARBO] DIETRICH] STEN] It doesn’t have the same ring to it, but if their pre-Hollywood work is considered, Anna Sten leaves the others at the starting gate (Garbo with admittedly only two films). In Hollywood it was a different matter. Imported on the strength of the success of the other two, Sten was reasonably expected to outshine both: but she became the outstanding, the most publicised of all those who didn’t make it. ‘Goldwyn’s folly’ she was called, after he had spent over dollars 5m on failing to make her a star.

She became famous in her native Soviet Union in the lead of Boris Barnet’s near-perfect comedy The Girl with the Hatbox (1927), as a naive country girl being either misunderstood or wooed by some of Moscow’s most colourful young men. One of these was the great screen villain Vladimir Fogel, and she ran foul of him again in the grim The Yellow Ticket (1928), directed by Fedor Ozep, whom she married. Again she was the girl from the steppes, Fogel the wealthy bourgeois Muscovite whose children she was looking after, and her refusal to play footsy finds her eventually working the streets.

Of her half-dozen Russian films, this became the most renowned throughout Europe, and Ozep took her to Germany to play Grushenka in his version of Dostoevsky, Der Morder Dimitri Karamasoff (1931). It may still be the best screen transcription of that writer, with Fritz Kortner on magnificent form as Dimitri, and Sten as the trollop who causes his downfall. This was one of the screen’s cliche roles, but Sten, part Marilyn Monroe, part Nancy Carroll, seemed never to have seen any previous screen vamp – let alone studied them.

Word from Europe was that Sten could out-Garbo Garbo, so Goldwyn was mindful to have her under contract. It was not perhaps a mistake on his part to publicise Sten as the new Garbo, since such was the fate of most of the other (female) European imports – though few of these remained residents of LA for long. It was an error to announce that her grooming would be in the hands of Dietrich’s mentor Josef von Sternberg, when neither he nor the equally autocratic Goldwyn ever took kindly to any ideas but his own. It was also foolish to spend two whole years with a constant barrage of publicity emerging about ‘tests’, plus the amounts being spent to turn Sten into a Hollywood ‘personality’, and on the search to find the vehicle to launch her.

It went without saying that puritan America was titillated by this formula: Old Europe plus beauty equals sin and temptation, and it was Zola’s whore, Nana, who became Sten’s first transatlantic incarnation – though not without a record number of tribulations. The first version, directed by George Fitzmaurice, was scrapped, and it was entirely remade by Dorothy Arzner. Goldwyn booked Radio City Music Hall for two almost unprecedented weeks (King Kong was another matter) – this was 1934 – and the suspense engendered among moviegoers, which meant just about everybody, was ended: it wasn’t that Sten wasn’t any good, but that she wasn’t very good. Acting in English, she was just another arch and accented seductress; and Zola’s great original had become merely another pot-bouille of the sins available to those who frequented the boulevards.

Goldwyn quickly rallied, returning Sten to Russia for a version of Tolstoy’s Resurrection, now entitled We Live Again (1934), directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Fredric March played the Prince who lives an idyll with his peasant sweetheart and has his way with her, later, after learning the ways of the Imperial court. He repents after she has lost the baby and slipped far, far along the primrose path. This adaptation made Tolstoy irredeemably coy and was avoided by cinemagoers who had already had two chances to see Hollywood versions of this tale during the previous seven years.

Goldwyn tried again, and again with a notable director, King Vidor, The Wedding Night (1935). Sten became a Polish Connecticut peasant girl who attracts the discontented city writer Gary Cooper

interesting information on Anna Sten please view:

http://filmstarpostcards.blogspot.ie/search/label/Anna%20Sten

Three Russian Girls, poster, from top, left, Anna Sten, Mimi Forsythe, Kathy Frye; right inset, Kent Smith, Anna Sten, 1943. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

When The Wedding Night became one of the few Cooper films to lose money Goldwyn was forced, finally, to see the writing on the wall. In letting Sten go he was relieved, at least, of the constant battles with her and her second husband, Eugene Frenke, over the publicity. Frenke took her to Britain for A Woman Alone (1936), which Ozep directed. Little was heard of it and less of Sten, till Hollywood’s enthusiasm for Russia’s war effort brought a few offers in films extolling the same. A handful of other movies followed, and in the Fifties she attempted to revive her career by studying at the Actors’ Studio. This led to the tour of Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, as Jenny, following its first presentation in New York, when Louis Armstrong’s record of ‘Mac the Knife’ did no harm at all. Sten found greater success with a new career – as a painter, exhibiting several times in New York.

She was one of cinema’s great enigmas. Most of the movies and people whom Goldwyn believed in are among the most disposable artefacts of Hollywood’s past. The exceptions – Cooper, Ronald Colman, William Wyler – worked with him under duress, for high salaries or/and brooking no interference. To read about Sten and Goldwyn or see the films she made for him is to be reminded of the inanities of an era long gone: but those of her dozen European films that I have seen might have been made yesterday.

The avove “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

For

Ella Logan was born in 1913 in Glasgow. She made her West End debut in 1930 with the play “Darling I Love You”. In the mid 1930’s she emigrated to the U.S. and in Hollywood she made “Flying Hostess” in 1936, “52nd Street” and “The Goldwyn Follies” in 1938. During World War Two she entertained the troops in Europe and Africa. In 1947 she had a hufe success o Broadway as Sharon in “Finian’s Rainbow”. It was her final Broaway show. In the 1950’s she starred on television and inconcert and supper clubs. She died in 1969 at the age of 56. Her niece is the actress/singer Annie Ross.

Article in “The Scotsman”:

THE singer and entertainer Georgina Allan made her stage debut as a toddler, when she performed songs made famous by Sir Harry Lauder in music halls across Scotland. Briefly known as “Daisy Mars” and, by her late teens, as “Ella Logan”, this daughter of a spirit salesman and a warehouse worker was singing with London’s top dance bands, broadcasting on the BBC, and starring in West End revues. In the early 1930s she toured Europe – once apparently singing for a Cologne audience that included Hitler and several senior Nazis – before moving to the US where she is believed to have married for the first time. There she recorded with jazz greats including Benny Goodman. By the late 1930s, her exuberant swing recordings of traditional Scottish songs earned her the names “The Swinging Scots Lassie” and “The Loch Lomond Lass” when she topped the bill in nightclub revues. From 1935, she was based in Hollywood. Just before she left New York, her sister Mary Dalziel Short (May) (190169), and her family visited from Glasgow. May Allan and her husband, Jack Short, had a music hall act as The Logan Family, featuring their five children, including James Short (actor and comedian Jimmy Logan, 19282001) and Annabelle Short (the jazz singer Annie Ross, born 1930).

The above article can be accessed online here.

Article on Ella Logan on “Masterworks Broadway” website can be accessed here.

They believed that Annabelle could be the next Shirley Temple, and left the five-year-old in her aunt’s care in Hollywood, where Ella Logan was trying to forge a movie career. Between 1936 and 1938 she had minor roles in five films: Flying Hostess (1936), Top of the Town (1937), Woman Chases Man (1937), 52nd Street (1937) and The Goldwyn Follies (1938), in which she introduced two of George Gershwin’s last songs. In 1941, Ella Logan married the screenwriter and producer Fred Finkelhoffe, a marriage that raised her status in Hollywood society. After the Second World War, during which she entertained American forces in Italy and in Britain, she enjoyed her greatest triumph playing Sharon, a part written specially for her, in the original 1947 Broadway production of the musical Finian’s Rainbow.

Divorced in 1954, she was subsequently romantically linked to several well-known bachelors, including former New York City mayor William O’Dwyer. During the 1950s she worked occasionally on television. In 1955, she returned to Scotland for a high-profile run at the Glasgow Empire and, the following year, she visited Glasgow to perform in jazz legend Louis Armstrong’s show

Ann Blyth (Wikipedia)

Ann Blyth was one of the ugly ducklings of show business. As a teenage star she was one of the least attractive of that unprepossessing species. Then she suddenly emerged as one of the screen’s better soubrettes, shed of the affectation that had marked her earlier work and now very pretty. Then, just as she looked like taking her place among the top stars, she disappeared”. – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”. (1972)

Ann Blyth seemed to have two distinct careers. In the 1940’s she was brilliant as Velma he spiteful spoilt daughter of Joan Crawford in 1945’s “Mildred Pierce”. She was nominated for an Academy Award. In the 1950’s she was under contract to MGM and made some of their big budget movies where she sang wonderfully and was very nice. It would have been terrific if she was allowed to show more for her lemon acid and vinegar as she matured. Her MGM musicals included “The Great Caruso” with Mario Lanza in 1950, “Rose Marie” with Howard Keel and “Kismet”” with Keel and Vic Damone. Her greatest box office success was “The Student Prince” where Mario Lanza lurked inside the body of Edmund Purdom and belted out Sigmund Romberg’s glorious songs. Ann Blyth retired from major movie making at the end of the 50’s to devote time to her family of five children.

Her IMDB entry:

The dark, petulant beauty of this petite American film and musical star worked to her advantage, especially in her early dramatic career. Ann Marie Blyth was born of Irish stock to Harry and Nan Blyth on August 16, 1928, in Mt. Kisco, New York. Her parents split while she was young and she, her mother and sister moved to New York City, where the girls attended various Catholic schools. Already determined at an early age to perform, Ann attended Manhattan’s Professional Children’s School and was already a seasoned radio performer, particularly on soap dramas, while in elementary school. A member of New York’s Children’s Opera Company, the young girl made an important Broadway debut as Paul Lukas‘ and Mady Christians‘ daughter in the classic Lillian Hellman WWII drama “Watch on the Rhine” (1941), billed as Anne (with an extra “e”). She stayed with the show for two years.

While touring with the play in Los Angeles, the teenager was noticed by director Henry Koster at Universal and given a screen test. Signed on as Ann (without the “e”) Blyth, the pretty, photographic colleen displayed her warbling talent in her debut film Chip Off the Old Block (1944), a swing-era teen musical starring Universal song-and-dance favorites Donald O’Connor and Peggy Ryan. She followed it pleasantly enough with other “B” tunefests such as The Merry Monahans (1944) and Babes on Swing Street (1944). It wasn’t until Warner Bros. borrowed her to make self-sacrificing mother Joan Crawford‘s life pure hell as malicious, spiteful daughter Veda in the classic, Oscar-winning wallowMildred Pierce (1945) that she really clicked with viewers and set up her dramatic career. With murder on her young character’s mind, Hollywood stood up and took notice of this fresh-faced talent.

Although Ann lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year to another Anne (Anne Revere), she was borrowed again by Warner Bros. to film Danger Signal (1945). During filming, Ann suffered a broken back in a sledding accident while briefly vacationing in Lake Arrowhead and had to be replaced in the role. After a long convalescence (over a year and a half in a back brace) Universal used her in a wheelchair-bound cameo in Brute Force (1947).

Her first starring role was an inauspicious one opposite Sonny Tufts in Swell Guy (1946), but she finally began gaining some momentum again. Instead of offering her musical gifts, she continued her serious streak with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Little Foxes (1941) in which Ann played the Bette Davis role of Regina at a younger age. Her attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching creature of the sea opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with much-older movie star Robert Montgomery in Once More, My Darling (1949).

At full-throttle as a star in the early 1950s, Ann transitioned easily among glossy operettas, wide-eyed comedies and all-out melodramas, some of which tended to be overbaked and, thereby, overplayed. When not dishing out the high dramatics of an adopted girl searching for her birth mother in Our Very Own (1950) or a wrongly-convicted murderess in Thunder on the Hill (1951), she was introducing classic standards as wife to Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso (1951) or playing pert and perky in such light confections as Katie Did It (1951). A well-embraced romantic leading lady, she made her last film for Universal playing a Russian countess courted by Gregory Peck in The World in His Arms (1952).

MGM eventually optioned her for its musical outings, having borrowed her a couple of times previously. She became a chief operatic rival to Kathryn Grayson at the studio during that time. Grayson, however, fared much better than Ann, who was given rather stilted vehicles.

Catching Howard Keel‘s roving eye while costumed to the nines in the underwhelmingRose Marie (1954) and his daughter in Kismet (1955), she also gussied up other stiff proceedings like The Student Prince (1954) and The King’s Thief (1955) will attest. Unfortunately, Ann came to MGM at the tail end of the Golden Age of musicals and probably suffered for it. She was dropped by the studio in 1956.

She reunited with old Universal co-star Donald O’Connor in The Buster Keaton Story(1957), but both were oddly cast with Ann playing a totally fictional love interest to O’Connor’s Keaton. Ann ended her career on a high note, however, playing the tragic title role in the The Helen Morgan Story (1957) opposite a gorgeously smirking Paul Newman. Ann has a field day as the piano-sitting, kerchief-holding, liquor-swilling torch singer whose train wreck of a personal life was destined for celluloid. Disappointing for Ann personally, no doubt, was that her singing voice had to be dubbed (albeit superbly) by the highly emotive, non-operatic songstress Gogi Grant.

Through with films, Ann’s later concentration (besides family life) was the musical stage, with dramatic TV guest appearances thrown in now and then. Over the years a number of classic songs have been tailored to suit Ann’s glorious lyric soprano both in concert form and on the civic light opera/summer stock stages. “The Sound of Music”, “The King and I”, “Carnival”, “Bittersweet”, “South Pacific”, “Show Boat” and “A Little Night Music” are but a few of her stage credits. During this time Ann appeared as the typical American housewife for Hostess in its Twinkie, cupcake and fruit pie commercials, a job that lasted well over a decade.

She made the last of her sporadic TV guest appearances on Quincy M.E. (1976) andMurder, She Wrote (1984) in the mid-’80s. Married since 1953 to Dr. James McNulty, the brother of late Irish tenor Dennis Day, she is the mother of five. Ann continues to be seen occasionally at social functions and conventions.

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

Her IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Ryan O’Neal was born in 1941 in Los Angeles. He first came to prominence with the television series “Empire” with Richard Egan and Terry Moore in 1962. Two years later he was internationally known for his performance as Rodney Harrington in the popular tlevision series “Peyton Place” with Dorothy Malone and Mia Farrow. The success of the show opened the door to big budget movies and he starred in 1970’s biggest hit “Love Story” with Ali McGraw. Over the next decade he starred in some major films including “Wha’s Up Doc”, “Paper Moon”, “Nickelodean”, “Barry Lyndon” and “A Bridge too Far”. His website here.

New York Times in 2023.

By Alissa Wilkinson

Dec. 8, 2023

He had the face of a fairy-tale lead, the kind that would have fit agreeably in an earlier Hollywood era but felt comfortingly alluring in the moment. Ryan O’Neal was a boxer in his youth — announcing his father had died on Friday, his son Patrick O’Neal pointed fans toward YouTube footage of O’Neal fighting Joe Frazier on national TV, with Muhammad Ali doing commentary. But when he migrated to acting, it suited him, and by 1964 he had become a star thanks to the ABC prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place.”

No wonder: O’Neal’s youthful looks, blond and round-cheeked and just a little brainy, remind you of the guy who sat next to you in A.P. bio and who would lend you a pen, or his lunch, if you needed it. It seemed, emphatically, to be the face of a good guy, the kind you definitely wanted to bring home to your parents. When O’Neal tested for the role of Oliver in “Love Story,” Ali MacGraw persuaded her husband, Robert Evans, the executive in charge at Paramount, to cast him.

As the boyish Harvard hockey player in love with Jenny, the whip-smart Radcliffe student, O’Neal was entrancing, and the pair had instant chemistry. “She had to go home to him at night, but I had her during the day,” O’Neal told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview many decades later. Their meet-cute in the movie, if you want to call it that, was sexy in a cerebral way, the pair sparring over a library checkout counter, then over coffee, where Jenny informs him that she asked him out because “I like your body.”

The movie, released in 1970, was a resounding success, in part because the sharp wit of its beginning gives way to star-crossed melancholy by the end, with Jenny dying of a terminal disease and Oliver stricken with grief, repeating a phrase from his lost sweetheart: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” It proved irresistible to audiences, and its success was, in part, what allowed Evans to make movies like “The Godfather” at Paramount later in the decade.

O’Neal would take that mix of innocence and wit, comfort and humor into his next movie and beyond. It turns out he could do screwball comedy, too. The meet-cute in Peter Bogdanovich’s “What’s Up, Doc?” featured O’Neal as Dr. Howard Bannister, a musicologist in dark-rimmed glasses, stumbling by accident into an erudite conversation about rocks with the chaotic Judy Maxwell, played by Barbra Streisand. He patronizes her, assuming she doesn’t know a thing about rocks, but his look of surprise at Judy’s proclamation that “I relate primarily to micas, quartz, feldspar” breaks across his face less as wounded ego than as genuine pleasure. By the time he’s fallen backward, landing on his rear as a cascade of nearby stuffed animals falls on his head, we’re in love, too.

O’Neal’s life and career were long and storied and not without controversies, among them his difficult relationship with his daughter, Tatum O’Neal, who made her big-screen debut at 9 alongside her father in Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon.” But one look at his Instagram account offers evidence that he believed his love story of a lifetime was with Farrah Fawcett.

Fawcett and O’Neal had their own strange sort of meet-cute. Fawcett’s husband, Lee Majors, introduced her to O’Neal in 1979, and the pair were soon romantically involved, though Majors and Fawcett didn’t divorce until 1982. O’Neal had also been married twice, to Joanna Moore and Leigh Taylor-Young, fathering three children, and had a fourth with Fawcett.

He and Fawcett stayed entwined for nearly 20 years. (She left in 1997, when she found him in bed with another woman.) They were reunited again from 2001, when O’Neal learned he had cancer, until Fawcett’s death in 2009. Not exactly a classic fairy tale. It was a rocky partnership, with both Tatum and Fawcett making accusations of physical abuse and fraught relationships with several of his children. But when Fawcett died of cancer — like Jenny in “Love Story” — it was hard to miss the parallels. Here was the star of “Love Story,” living the tragedy that had made him a star in the first place. Melodrama becomes reality.

The famous line from “Love Story” — that “love means never having to say you’re sorry” — plays well in a swoony tear-jerker, but doesn’t hold up so well in the light of day. Love does mean saying you’re sorry, over and over again, wisdom O’Neal eventually learned, at least on some level. Earlier this year, his daughter spoke of trying to reconcile with her father, with whom she subsequently reconnected, posting a picture of themon Instagram on April 21, his 82nd birthday, with the caption “Happy birthday dad I love you.”

“What’s Up, Doc?” concludes with Judy repeating the line about never saying you’re sorry, a little joke within the joke. And Howard, with O’Neal’s easy smile, smitten with her, proclaims, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard

Tippi Hedren. TCM Overview.

Tippi Hedren will forever be associated with two of Alfred Hitchcock’s classics, “The Birds” with Rod Taylor and Suzanne Pleshette in 1963 and “Marnie” with Sean Connery the following year. Prior to this, she made been a ttop flight model appearing in many magazines. She has continued her career while at the same time becoming a very famous animal rights activist and has rescued many animals especiallly lions. She is the mother of actress Melanie Griffith. Article on Tippi Hedren in “MailOnline” here.

TCM Overview:

One of the quintessential cool blondes of Hollywood cinema in the 1960s, Tippi Hedren was the discovery of British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and rose from relative obscurity to international fame on the strength of her lead roles in the “The Birds” (1963) and “Marine” (1964).

Groomed by the Master of Suspense to be the next Grace Kelly, Hedren came to resent Hitchcockâ¿¿s controlling influence on her life and quarreled with him openly, resulting in a professional rift that did initial damage to her long-term career.

After the end of her Universal contract in the early Seventies, Hedren traveled the world as a free agent and while on location for a film in Africa, became invested in the plight of exotic animals

. Founding a wildlife preserve in Southern California in 1978, the maturing actress rarely turned down paying work in low budget films or on television, channeling her salary into her habitat project and lobbying during her down time for legislative reforms to benefit the living conditions of exotic animals in captivity. The mother of actress Melanie Griffith, Hedren overcame early professional disappointments to weather a diverse and purposeful career lasting more than half a century, continuing to work exhaustively into her ninth decade and enduring as an iconic example of classical beauty backed by a progressive social conscience.

The above TCMOverview can also be accessed online here.

Jill Esmond. IMDB.

Jill Esmond was born in Wandsworth, London in 1908. Her mother was the character actress Eva Moore. In 1928 she featured in the play” Bird in the Hand” where she met Laurence Oliver.She made her fim debut in 1931 in Alfred Hitvhvovk’s “The Skin Game”. Initially she was more famous than Laurence Oliver. On Broadway she starred with Oliver , Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawerence in “Private Lives” and “The Green Bay Tree” in 1933. In Hollywood she made “Thirteen Women”. She tunred down the role in “A Bill of Divorcement” which went then to Katharine Hepburn. After her divorce from Oliver, she continued to act on film but in smaller character roles like “Journey for Margaret” in 1941 and “A Man Called Peter” in 1955. Jill Esmond died in 1990 at the age 0f 82.

TCM Overview:

Elegant, sophisticated British lead and supporting actress who fluctuated between stage and screen on both sides of the Atlantic. First wife of Laurence Olivier (1930-40), with whom she went to Hollywood for a screen test in 1931; both secured contracts with RKO, but Esmond was judged the more desirable film property and made several Hollywood films, often playing socialites, before returning to the London stage with Olivier in the early 1930s. She became a supporting player during the 1940s. Mother of Olivier’s first son, (Simon) Tarquin Olivier.

IMDB Minibiography:

An accomplished British actress with an air of reserve and elegance, Jill Esmond was born into show business. She was the daughter of actor H.V. Esmond and actress Eva Moore, both of whom were acclaimed stage performers. She spent time in boarding school when they were on the road performing. In her mid teens, she decided to follow in their footsteps. She reconsidered her decision when her father suddenly died in 1922, but decided to follow through. Her big break in 1927, when she won great praise for her performance in the play “Outward Bound.”

Her life changed forever in 1928, when she starred in the play “Bird in the Hand,” and she caught the eye of a highly talented but then little-known actor named Laurence Olivier. He quickly became smitten with her. At first she didn’t feel any attraction towards him, although she was impressed with his talent. In the play, she won greater acclaim and was cast to play the role on Broadway. To her surprise, Olivier followed her there made a point of being around her whenever he could. Gradually, her high regard for him became love, and after some hesitation, she accepted his marriage proposal, and they were married in 1930. Although it’s not remembered now, at the time, Esmond was better known and her career more established than Olivier’s.

My Pal Wolf, poster, poster art, rear l-r: Jill Esmond, Sharyn Moffett, foreground l-r: Sharyn Moffett, Grey Shadow, 1944. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Shortly after-wards, she began to get film offers, which she accepted although Olivier was scornful of the film industry. Her first major role was in The Skin Game (1931), a film about a feud between two wealthy families which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Again, she received favorable notice, and followed up with memorable performances inState’s Attorney (1932) and Thirteen Women (1932). However, in the mid-1930s, Olivier’s career began to take off. He won rave reviews for his performances in the plays “Private Lives” in 1933 (which Esmond co-starred in) and “Romeo and Juliet” in 1935.

As a result, Esmond began to cut back on her work, particularly after she became a mother in 1936. In 1937, her husband won even more acclaim in the classic film Fire Over England (1937), but in doing so, he had an affair with his co-star, actress Vivien Leigh. Rumors began to spread after the pair co-starred in That Hamilton Woman (1941). Esmond was shocked when she found out, as their marriage had appeared to be a happy one, and she initially refused his request for a divorce. However, in 1940, feeling betrayed and humiliated, she filed for divorce on grounds of adultery and named Leigh in the complaint. They split up, and Esmond sought solace in renewing her career, although she was now hopelessly overshadowed by her former husband and his new wife. She turned in well-received performances, particularly in the classic films Random Harvest (1942) and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944).

As the 1940s came to a close, her film appearances became less frequent, and motherhood and family life took up more of her time. Her final film appearance was in A Man Called Peter (1955). She did win a recurring role in the TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955), playing Eleanor of Aquitaine. By 1960 she stopped performing and went into private life. That same year, history repeated itself as Vivien Leigh divorced Olivier, who had left her to marry Joan Plowright, but Esmond never made any public statements. Her last public appearance was in a 1982 interview about her famous late ex-husband. In it, she revealed how hurt she was by how Olivier became famous with her help, but then abandoned her for a more famous actress. Other than that, she stayed out of the limelight until her death at the age of 82.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: anonymous

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Anna Kashfi

Anna Kashfi obituary in “The Telegraph” in 1980

Barry Sullivan

Kitty Kallen

Anna Sten

Ella Logan

Ann Blyth

Ann Blyth (Wikipedia)

Ryan O’Neal

New York Times in 2023.

Tippi Hedren

Tippi Hedren. TCM Overview.

Jill Esmond

Jill Esmond. IMDB.

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