David Dukes was a very reliable young character actor who was born in San Francesco in 1945. He is best remembered for his role as ‘Leslie Slote’ in the dual television miniseries “The Winds of War” and “War and Rememberance”. He also played major roles onstage in such plays as “Dracula”, “Amadeus”, “M Butterfly” and “Bent”. His first film was “The Strawberry Statement” in 1970. Among his other films were “Without a Trace” and “Gods and Monsters”. He died suddenly of a heart attack while on location making the TV film “Rose Red” . Tribute to David Dukes by his wife can be accessed here.
TCM Overview:
This classically-trained American repertory actor has gone on to a busy career as a leading man in Broadway shows, TV and films. Since the 1970s, David Dukes has often played diplomats, surgeons and other high-powered professionals and bluebloods. He is particularly remembered for his portrayal of low-level career diplomat Leslie Slote, who finds inner courage, in the ABC miniseries based on the Herman Wouk novels “The Winds of War” (1983), and “War and Remembrance” (1988). Dukes also spent three seasons as the wealthy doctor husband of Swoosie Kurtz’s Alex on the NBC drama series “Sisters.” seasons of the NBC series “Sisters.”
The son of California highway patrolman, the handsome, dark-haired actor trained at the American Conservatory Theatre and had appeared in 37 professional productions before making his Broadway debut at age 25 in Moliere’s “School for Wives.” Dukes’ subsequent Broadway work has included playing Horst, a gay concentration camp inmate who dares to love a fellow prisoner (Richard Gere) in Martin Sherman’s “Bent” (1979), succeeding Ian McKellen as Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s award-winning “Amadeus” (1982) and replacing John Lithgow as the diplomat protagonist of David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly” (1988).
Dukes made his TV debut as the son of a wealthy Irish-American family in “Beacon Hill” (CBS, 1975), a lavish soap set in the 1920s. His subsequent TV credits of note include “Harold Robbins’ ’79 Park Avenue'” (NBC, 1977) as immigrant Mike Koshko, “Mayflower: The Pilgrim’s Adventure” (CBS, 1979), as Miles Standish, “Portrait of a Rebel: Margaret Sanger” (CBS, 1980), as the husband of the pioneer for contraceptive rights, “Sentimental Journey” (CBS, 1984), as clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss, “The Josephine Baker Story” (HBO, 1991), as orchestra leader Jo Bouillon, the husband of the celebrated music hall performer, and the Emmy-winning “And the Band Played On” (HBO, 1993), as a medical researcher.
In 1996, he played playwright Arthur Miller in the HBO film “Norma Jean & Marilyn.” His most notorious TV guest shot came in 1977 on a special hour-long episode of “All in the Family” wherein he played a would-be rapist who detains Edith (Jean Stapleton) at gunpoint in her living room while friends and family await her at her 50th birthday party. Dukes also worked in the Norman Lear stable in the short-lived 1977 syndicated serial “All That Glitters,” playing a male-rights activist (the series reversed gender power). More recent TV series have not proven successful, nor given Dukes roles through which he could shine. He was husband to Marilyn Kentz in the short-lived bomb “The Mommies” (NBC, 1993), and in 1997 was father to Pauly Shore on the equally short-lived Fox sitcom “Pauly.”
In feature films, Dukes had a rare lead role in “The First Deadly Sin” (1980), as a psychotic killer pursued by detective Frank Sinatra. He was Kate Nelligan’s estranged husband in the missing child drama “Without a Trace” (1983), and Marsha Mason’s playwright former lover in “Only When I Laugh” (1981). Dukes played a stiff college professor in “The Men’s Club” (1986), a poorly received talkfest about a men’s encounter group and was Alice Krige’s pianist husband in “See You in the Morning” (1989). Most of his 90s credits have been in direct-to-video releases, except for “Fled” (1996), in which he played a prosecuting attorney and 1998’s “Gods and Monsters” which featured him as the lover of famed early Hollywood horror director James Whale.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Alexander Livingston Nicol, actor: born Ossining, New York 20 January 1916; married 1948 Jean Fleming (two sons, one daughter); died Montecito, California 29 July 2001.
The actor Alex Nicol played occasional leading roles on screen, for which his fair-haired good looks and sturdy physique seemed to qualify him, and when, on stage, he played Brick in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Williams wrote that Nicol captured the part exactly as he had conceived it. But it was as a character actor that he spent most of his career, with a particular flair for portraying villains with a weak or pathological nature, epitomised by his fine performance in the western The Man From Laramie. He also directed several films, and appeared frequently on television.
Alex Nicol
He was born Alexander Livingston Nicol Jnr, in Ossining, New York, in 1916, though when his movie career started 34 years later he was astute enough to adjust the year to 1919. “I was a little older than some of the other people under contract so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll cure that right now’,” he later confessed. His father was a prison warden at Sing Sing and his mother a head matron at a women’s detention centre, so it was ironic that he studied at the Fagin School of Dramatic Arts before joining Maurice Evans’ theatrical company, with whom he made his Broadway début with a walk-on in Henry IV Part One (1939).
His career was interrupted by a five-year spell in the army, in which he served with the National Guard and Cavalry Unit and attained the rank of Technical Sergeant, after which he enrolled at the Actor’s Studio. “With Evans, I was the least important member of the cast. I was learning my craft in public. Then it all got put on hold until the end of the war, after which I became one of the original members of the Actor’s Studio. Marty Ritt and Elia Kazan were running the Studio then.” Nicol returned to Broadway in a revival of Clifford Odets’ potent pro-union dramaWaiting for Lefty (1946), followed by roles in Sundown (1948) and Forward the Heart (1948).
Alex Nicol
He was part of the original cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical South Pacific (1949), playing one of the marines, but after a few weeks in the show he successfully auditioned to replace Ralph Meeker as the sailor Mannion in the hit playMister Roberts, and was also made understudy to the play’s star Henry Fonda:
But I never made it! He never missed a performance! Henry’s wife at the time killed herself during the run of the show and he still didn’t miss the performance. We were one minute from curtain time when Fonda walked in, in costume, and he just walked right out, hit his mark and played the performance as though nothing had happened.
(Fonda’s proprietorial approach to the part became legendary. After he heard that James Stewart had expressed a willingness to replace him when he left the show, he stayed with it for the entire three-year Broadway run and subsequent tour, a total of nearly 1,700 performances.)
While acting in Mister Roberts, Nicol was seen by the Universal director George Sherman, who was in New York to prepare The Sleeping City (1950), to be filmed entirely on location. He cast Nicol as a young doctor who commits suicide after stealing drugs to pay off gambling debts. “It was a very showy, flashy part,” said the actor. “The whole thing was shot in a really grim, Neo-Realist style.” Nicol was given a contract by Universal, and Sherman also directed his second film, Tomahawk (1951), in which he played a cavalry officer with a hatred of Indians.
Roles as a prisoner-of-war in Target Unknown (1951) and a trainee pilot in Air Cadet (1951) preceded Nicol’s first major part, co-starring with Frank Sinatra and Shelley Winters in the musical drama Meet Danny Wilson (1952). Winters wrote, “Alex Nicol was a very mature, menschie guy (for an actor). He was great fun and lovely to work with.” As the lifelong protector and best friend of a bumptious singer (Sinatra), Nicol handled a difficult part with conviction. However, in his next film he was cast as a heavy again, causing Loretta Young to be wrongly sent to prison, then blackmailing her on her release, in Because of You (1952), and he was a troublesome sergeant in Red Ball Express (1952), directed by Budd Boetticher. “A talented guy,” said Nicol, “but he was the only director in my whole career whom I couldn’t get along with. He had a very big ego.”
Nicol’s first starring role was opposite Maureen O’Hara in The Redhead from Wyoming (1953), a lacklustre western directed by Lee Sholem:
“Roll ‘Em Sholem” they used to call him. All he would say before every scene was “Roll ‘Em!” And then when you got to the end of the scene he’d say “Cut!” and then he’d look at the script clerk and say, “Did they say all the words?”, and if she said “Yes” then that was it. When the picture was over I went to the front office at Universal and asked to be released from my contract. They thought I was crazy. But I thought, “If this is my big break, then I’m not going very far.”
As a freelance, Nicol was directed by the former Actor’s Studio teacher Daniel Mann in About Mrs Leslie (1953) starring Shirley Booth and Robert Ryan. “The script wasn’t as strong as it might have been, but it was a great cast.” He returned to Universal (at a much larger fee than he had been getting as a contract player) to appear in two George Sherman films, Lone Hand (1953) andDawn at Socorro (1954). “George was really a fan of mine and always wanted to work with me, so he kept bringing me back to Universal.” Nicol then made three films in England, most notably Ken Hughes’s The House Across the Lake (1954), in which he was a failed novelist who becomes involved in crime:
It was a great script, and Sidney James, a wonderful actor, was in it, along with Hillary Brooke. Eventually I got back to the United States and I was glad to come back. Those British pictures kept me working, but they were really fast, really cheaply budgeted.
Anthony Mann directed Nicol in his role as a pilot in Strategic Air Command (1955), and it was Mann who then gave the actor his best- remembered role, that of the weak, psychopathic son of a patriarch rancher (Donald Crisp) in the darkly compelling western (allegedly inspired by King Lear) The Man from Laramie (1955), starring James Stewart. “Tony was very creative, great to work with, and I admired him.”
Jacques Tourneur’s Great Day in the Morning (1956) was another superior western, but it became apparent to Nicol that his Hollywood career was not progressing, and in 1956 he returned to Broadway to replace Ben Gazzara in the leading role of Brick, the former athlete who has become a guilt-ridden alcoholic in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It brought the accolade from Williams and when the Broadway run ended Nicol starred in the tour.
He had the chance to create a role on stage when he was starred with Shelley Winters in the play Saturday Night Kid (1958), but it closed in Philadelphia without reaching Broadway and he returned to Hollywood where he made his first film as a director,The Screaming Skull (1958), in which he also starred:
I wasn’t doing the kind of films as an actor that I wanted to do, so I thought, “Well, I’ll try directing.” We shot the picture in six weeks and it did very well, so I was happy with that.
Nicol travelled to Italy when the director Martin Ritt gave him a role in Five Branded Women (1959), and while there he was offered parts in other European movies, so he settled there for two years with his family. (In 1948 he married the actress Jean Fleming and they had three children.)
We lived in Rome; God, it was beautiful. We did a lot of films very quickly, with backing from Italian and Yugoslavian finance sources. It was one of the happiest times of my life.
Returning to the United States in 1961, he played Paul Anka’s father in the thriller Look in Any Window (1961), then produced and directed a war film in Rome, Then There Were Three (1961), in which he co-starred with the American expatriate Frank Latimore. Subsequent acting roles included two spaghetti westerns, The Savage Guns (1962) and Gunfighters of the Casa Grande (1964), and Roger Corman’s gangster movie based on the life of criminal Ma Barker, Bloody Mama (1969), in which Nicol played the husband of Shelley Winters.
Nicol had made his television début in 1949 in Lux Video Theater. Other shows included Studio One, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone and The FBI, and he directed episodes of Daniel Boone and The Wild Wild West. The last film in which he acted was A*P*E (1976), an independent movie made by a friend of the actor.
In 1996 Nicol told the interviewer Wheeler Winston Dixon,
Starting in the 1960s, I started putting money aside to buy a couple of apartment houses, which was the smartest move I ever made because I’m living on that money now. I like it here in Santa Barbara, living in a rather elegant area. I’m winding up pretty much the way I wanted to.
George HamiltonGeorge Hamilton DOCTOR, YOUVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!, U.S. poster, top left: George Hamilton, Sandra Dee; middle row: Dick Kallman, Bill Bixby, Dwayne Hickman, Celeste Holm, Mort Sahl, 1967
George Hamilton was born in Memphis in 1939. “Whwrw the Boys Are” released in 1960 ith Dolores Hart and Connie Francis was his first film lead role to achieve major recognition. He was also noticed in “Home from the Hill” a lurid melodrama where he was the weakish son of Robert Mitchum and Eleanor Parker. In 1979 he had an un expected major hit with “Love at First Bite” a spoof of the Dracula films. He followed this movie with another succesful film “Zorro the Gay Blade”. However he did not sustain his career momentum as a leading man and began to take television roles. In 1990 he was featured in “The Godfather Part 3”. He has recently published his autobiography “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” which won praise for it’s self-deprecating humour. A “MailOnline” interview with George Hamilton can be accessed here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Noted these days for his dashing, sporting, jet-setter image and perpetually bronzed skin tones in commercials, film spoofs and reality shows, George Hamilton was, at the onset, a serious contender for dramatic film stardom. Born George Stevens Hamilton IV in Memphis, TN, on August 12, 1939, the son of gregarious Southern belle beauty Ann Potter Hamilton Hunt Spaulding, whose second husband (of four) was George Stevens “Spike” Hamilton, a touring bandleader. Moving extensively as a youth due to his father’s work (Arkansas, Massachusetts, New York, California), young George got a taste of acting in plays while attending Palm Beach High School. With his exceedingly handsome looks and attractive personality, he took a bold chance and moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s.
MGM (towards the end of the contract system) saw in George a budding talent with photogenic appeal. It wasted no time putting him in films following some guest appearances on TV. His first film, a lead in Crime & Punishment, USA (1959), was an offbeat, updated adaptation of the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel. While the film was not overwhelmingly successful, George’s heartthrob appeal was obvious. He was awarded a Golden Globe for “Most Promising Newcomer” as well as being nominated for “Best Foreign Actor” by the British Film Academy (BAFTA). This in turn led to an enviable series of film showcases, including the memorable Southern drama Home from the Hill (1960), which starred Robert Mitchum and Eleanor Parker and featured another handsome, up-and-coming George (George Peppard); Angel Baby (1961), in which he played an impressionable lad who meets up with evangelist Mercedes McCambridge; and Light in the Piazza (1962) (another BAFTA nomination), in which he portrays an Italian playboy who falls madly for American tourist Yvette Mimieux to the ever-growing concern of her mother Olivia de Havilland. Along with the good, however, came the bad and the inane, which included the dreary sudsers All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) and By Love Possessed (1961) and the youthful spring-break romps Where the Boys Are (1960), which had Connie Francis warbling the title tune while slick-as-car-seat-leather George pursued coed Dolores Hart, and Looking for Love (1964), which was more of the same.
Not yet undone by this mixed message of serious actor and glossy pin-up, George went on to show some real acting muscle in the offbeat casting of a number of biopics — asMoss Hart in Act One (1963), an overly fictionalized and sanitized account of the late playwright (the real Moss should have looked so good!), as ill-fated country star Hank Williams in Your Cheatin’ Heart (1964), and as the famed daredevil Evel Knievel (1971).
The rest of the ’60s and ’70s, however, rested on his fun-loving, idle-rich charm that bore a close resemblance to his off-camera image in the society pages. As the 1960s began to unfold, he started making headlines more as a handsome escort to the rich, the powerful and the beautiful than as an acclaimed actor — none more so than his 1966 squiring of President Lyndon Johnson‘s daughter Lynda Bird Johnson. He was also once engaged to actress Susan Kohner, a former co-star. Below-average films such as Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding! (1967), A Time for Killing (1967) and The Power (1968) effectively ended his initially strong ascent to film stardom.
From the 1970s on George tended to be tux-prone on standard film and TV comedy and drama, whether as a martini-swirling opportunist, villain or lover. A wonderful comeback for him came in the form of the disco-era Dracula spoof Love at First Bite (1979), which he executive-produced. Nominated for a Golden Globe as the campy neck-biter displaced and having to fend off the harsh realities of New York living, he continued on the parody road successfully with Zorro: The Gay Blade (1981) in the very best Mel Brooks tradition.
This renewed popularity led to a one-year stint on Dynasty (1981) during the 1985-1986 season and a string of fun, self-mocking commercials, particularly his Ritz Cracker and (Toasted!) Wheat Thins appearances that often spoofed his overly tanned appearance. In recent times he has broken through the “reality show” ranks by hosting The Family(2003), which starred numerous members of a traditional Italianate family vying for a $1,000,000 prize, and participating in the second season of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars(2005), where his charm and usual impeccable tailoring scored higher than his limberness. On the tube he can still pull off a good time, whether playing flamboyant publisher William Randolph Hearst in Rough Riders (1997), playing the best-looking Santa Claus ever in A Very Cool Christmas (2004), hosting beauty pageants or making breezy gag appearances.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
The actress Phyllis Kirk will always be associated with her role as the dark-haired heroine in the 3-D horror movie House of Wax (1953), pursued through the night streets by a mad sculptor, played by Vincent Price, and saved by a whisker from being dipped in hot wax. Ironically, it was a role she fought against playing. “I tried to turn it down, with the arrogance of a young actress who thinks she is going to rule the world – and doesn’t realise, while she’s bitching about House of Wax, that that will probably be the most memorable thing she does in the movie business!”
Although Kirk was in some other fine films, notably the nostalgic musical Two Weeks with Love (1950) and the distinguished film noir Crime Wave (1954), and she had a prolific career in television, for which she starred in the series The Thin Man, it is for House of Wax that she will be primarily remembered, along with her campaigning for civil rights .
Of Danish descent, she was born Phyllis Kirkegaard in 1929 in Syracuse, New York. After working as a waitress, shop assistant and model, she moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey, in her late teens to be able to study acting in New York City with the famed coach Sanford Meisner. She made her Broadway début, having shortened her last name to Kirk, in 1949 in a play that promised much.
Mrs OMalley And Mr Mallone : Original Cinema One Sheet Poster
My Name is Aquilon was a comedy by the French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, which had been a hit in Paris. Adapted for the United States by Philip Barry, it co-starred Lilli Palmer with Aumont, who played a charming cad whose conquests included Kirk, as a French maid. Before it opened to hostile reviews, Aumont had acrimonious battles with Barry over the adaptation, and when Palmer was hailed as the best thing about the evening, Aumont stated that on opening night she had given an entirely different performance to the one they had been rehearsing for six weeks. The play ran for 31 performances, but Kirk’s performance was noted by a talent scout for Sam Goldwyn, and after her dispiriting introduction to Broadway, Kirk was glad to accept an offer to go to Hollywood.
She made her screen début in the Goldwyn drama Our Very Own (1950), playing the friend of a teenager (Ann Blyth, the film’s star) who is traumatised by the discovery that she is adopted. Although Blyth could do little with the main role (her exasperating character needed a good shaking), Kirk was very sympathetic as a girl who envies Blyth the love and support with which she has been raised (Kirk’s father is unable to find the time to attend her graduation). Goldwyn then sold Kirk’s contract to MGM, who gave her a less sympathetic role in the delightful musical Two Weeks With Love, as the haughty beauty at summer camp who patronises her younger friend (Jane Powell) and jealously tries to sabotage a budding romance between Powell and Latin lover Ricardo Montalban.
In 1952 Kirk moved to Warners, where, after small roles in About Face, The Iron Mistress and Stop, You’re Killing Me (all 1952), she was given the leading female role in House of Wax, playing the character created by Fay Wray in an earlier version of the tale, Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). “I was not interested in becoming the Fay Wray of my time,” Kirk told the historian Tom Weaver,
and I was told, “You’re under contract, and you’ll do what we ask you to do, unless you care to be suspended.” I also did not want to be in a film that was using a gimmick, which I thought 3-D was. I went on to have a lot of fun. Vincent Price was a divine man, and a divine actor, and director André de Toth was a remarkable, highly intelligent guy who was more appreciated in Europe than at home.
Kirk worked with de Toth in her next two films, a western co-starring Randolph Scott, Thunder Over the Plains (1953), and an exceptional film noir, Crime Wave, in which she was the wife of a former convict (Gene Nelson) who is hounded by a dogged, toothpick-chewing police detective (Sterling Hayden). The French director Bertrand Tavernier said that,
de Toth showed himself to be particularly inspired by the delightful Phyllis Kirk, a modest and under-rated actress whom he rewarded for
rescuing many inadequately written characters (as in Thunder Over the Plains) by giving her at last a role worthy of her in Crime Wave, where she is splendidly dignified and straightforward.
(Another French director, Jean-Pierre Melville, acknowledged that he loved Crime Wave enough to steal its ending for his own film noir Le Deuxième Souffle, 1966.) Among Crime Wave’s splendid supporting cast playing lowlifes who hold Kirk hostage was Charles Buchinsky (later Bronson), who had also menaced her in House of Wax. “Now there was a piece of work,” said Kirk.
I didn’t particularly like him, he was full of oats and swaggering around and being terribly macho – it may have to do with the fact that he wasn’t very tall. I got to know him better over the years, and began to like him much more as an actor.
Kirk then became one of those American stars used to boost British product, starring opposite John Bentley in River Beat (1954), a superior “B” movie and an impressive directorial début by Guy Green, who stated, “Phyllis Kirk was an up-and-coming actress who never became a major star, but she was a very bright, nice girl, whom I was lucky to have.” Kirk recalled,
My favourite story in London was to point out that the director of House of Wax had only one eye and couldn’t see in three dimensions. Everybody in London thought that was hilarious, but I’m sure nobody at Warner Brothers thought it hilarious that I was saying that.
Kirk was leading lady to Frank Sinatra in the western Johnny Concho (1956) and to Jerry Lewis in The Sad Sack (1957), but she was increasingly acting on television, with guest appearances on anthology drama shows such as Studio One, Schlitz Playhouse of the Stars and The Ford Television Theatre. “I wouldn’t trade my Hollywood experience for anything,” she said,
but TV taught me the most about acting. There were a couple of live television things that I loved doing. There was a series called Robert Montgomery Presents, and we did The Great Gatsby [1955] with Montgomery as Gatsby and I played Daisy Buchanan. I loved that, and I thought they did a wonderful job with it.
Kirk’s most famous role on television was her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man, a series that ran for three years (1957-59). Peter Lawford played her playboy-detective husband Nick in the show, based on the Dashiell Hammett novel and the MGM film series. Her last television role was in a 1970 episode of The FBI.
Long considered a confirmed bachelor-girl, the strong-willed and independent Kirk had a long friendship with the mordant comic Mort Sahl, but later married the television producer Warren Bush, who died in 1992.
As a child, Kirk had battled with polio, and in the early Seventies, after a fall damaged her hip, she had trouble walking. During her film career, she had contributed interviews and articles to the newspaper of the American Civil Liberties Union, and as her acting career slowed, she devoted more time to political and social causes, gaining particular notoriety when she joined other celebrities, including Ray Bradbury and Norman Mailer, in campaigning against the death sentence of the convicted murderer Caryl Chessman. “I even visited Chessman several times in San Quentin until his execution in 1960,” Kirk said. “There’s no doubt he did some ghastly things, but he did not kill anybody. Also, I abhor capital punishment, always have and always will.”
Before her retirement in 1992, Kirk also worked in public relations and as a publicist for CBS News.
Tom Vallance
“The Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
In the nostalgic musical Grease (1978), about growing up in a fantasised America of the 1950s, there is an appropriately evocative song called Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee.
Pert, petite blonde Sandra Dee, who has died aged 62 of kidney disease, was the sweetheart of the teen set from the late 50s to the mid-60s. Born Alexandra Zuck, in New Jersey, she became a model while still at school and appeared in television commercials, which led her to Hollywood. (Many years later, she revealed that she had been the victim of a sexually abusive stepfather and a domineering mother, who pushed her into films).
Her screen debut, aged 14, was in Until They Sail (1957), followed by the title role in Vincente Minnelli’s The Reluctant Debutante (1958), based on the West End hit by William Douglas Home, in which the very American Dee played the very English Rex Harrison’s daughter.
This implausibility was explained in the script by a prior transatlantic misalliance on the part of Harrison’s Lord Broadbent. According to the producer, Dee was cast “for the sake of the US teenage public”. However, having been coached in diction and demeanour, she got through the part with surprising poise.
In 1959, the 5ft 5ins tall Dee was seen to embody the wholesome, all-American ideal in Gidget (a nickname meaning “girl midget”). Despite not measuring up to the bikinied girls on the beach, she is courted by the two grooviest surfers in town, Moondoggie (James Darren) and Kahoona (Cliff Robertson). The film set the tone for the “beach party” movies of the 1960s.
Most important for Dee was her contract, in 1959, with Universal Studios, where her image of a budding beauty was polished. First, there was Douglas Sirk’s ripe remake of Imitation Of Life (1959), in which Dee, feeling neglected by her glamorous acting mother (Lana Turner), falls in love with her mother’s boyfriend (John Gavin).
I’d Rather Be Rich, poster, top l-r: Sandra Dee, Robert Goulet, Sandra Dee, Andy Williams, Sandra Dee, bottom l-r: Maurice Chevalier, Hermione Gingold on poster art, 1964. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Then there was The Wild And The Innocent (1959), a western with 54-year-old Gilbert Roland and 35-year-old Audie Murphy panting after 17-year-old Dee.
Max Steiner’s insistent theme from A Summer Place (1959) had Dee and her blond male equivalent, Troy Donahue, making love to its strains on the Maine coast. The film came at the start of the sexually permissive era, and consists of Dee complaining about the “cast-iron girdle” her mother buys to hide her burgeoning curves.
In 1960, Dee met pop idol Bobby Darin in Portofino, Italy, while they were appearing together in Come September (1961), and they were married soon after. In the film, the couple represented the younger generation up against oldsters Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida. Dee and Darin, now fan magazine favourites, co-starred as newly weds in If A Man Answers (1961).
Dee made a rather pale replacement for Debbie Reynolds in Tammy Tell Me True (1961) and Tammy And The Doctor (1963), but was well cast as the daughter of the American ambassador in love with the Russian ambassador’s son in Peter Ustinov’s Romanoff And Juliet (1961), and as conservative James Stewart’s rebellious daughter in Take Her, She’s Mine (1962).
After the breakup of her marriage to Darin in 1967, however, she found there was not much work for an ageing teenage star. She did get to play Rosalind Russell’s granddaughter in Rosie (1967), and appeared in The Dunwich Horror (1969), as a student lured away from college by a crazed Dean Stockwell, who attempts to sacrifice her to the devil. But then she turned to pills and alcohol, admitting she was drinking more than a quart of whisky a day as her weight fell to 80lbs. (She was anorexic for most of her life.)
Dee became a recluse in Los Angeles for some years, until encouraged to stop drinking by her son Dodd Darin, who, in 1994, wrote a book about his parents, Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives Of Bobby Darin And Sandra Dee. Kevin Spacey’s recent biopic of Darin, Beyond The Sea, with Kate Bosworth playing Dee, sparked a renewed interest in her life.
She is survived by her son.
· Sandra Dee (Alexandra Zuck), actor, born April 23 1942; died February 20 2005
Her Guardian” obituary by Ronald Bergan, please click here for online.
Horne was born in Buenos Aires of American parents (his father was a businessman in the oil trade). When he was five he went to live with his mother in Havana. Ten years later he was sent to “a little school in New England for troubled children,” in his words. He attended the University of California, where he decided to be an actor.
Horne moved to New York where he appeared in an off-Broadway flop, then began to get regular work on television, including an adaptation of Billy Budd. He also joined the Actor’s Studio.
Tempest, poster, (aka LA A, front to rear: Silvana Mangano, Geoffrey Horne, Van Heflin, 1958. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
In July 1956, Horne successfully auditioned for a small role in The Strange One (1957), whose cast was composed entirely Actors’ Studio alumni. The film was not a huge hit but was widely acclaimed; it was marked the film debut of Ben Gazzara and George Peppard.
The film was produced by Sam Spiegel who then cast Horne in a role in Bridge on the River Kwai in January 1957.
Spiegel also signed Horne to a long term contract – one film a year for five years. “I know Sam wouldn’t send me down the river,” said Horne. “He’s a man of great taste and talent. And the best of the independents to be linked up with, what with all the old-time studio executive types on the way out… I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a star… Time will tell.”
Otto Preminger borrowed him for a role in Bonjour Tristesse but he would make no further films with Spiegel. He then made Tempest in Yugoslavia.[6]
Grant Williams is best rememberd for his lead performance in the cult science-fiction classic “The Incredible Shrinking Man” which was released in 1957. He was born in 1931 in New York City and began acting as a student with the Actor’s Studio.
His other films of interest was “Four Girls in Town”, “Written on the Wind” and “Susan Slade”. Grant Williams died in 1985 aged 53. To view article on Grant William’s career, please click here.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will host a month-long series of screenings of classic horror films with “Universal’s Legacy of Horror” in October. The series is part of the studio’s year-long 100th anniversary celebration engaging Universal’s fans and all movie lovers in the art of moviemaking.
Pictured: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, 1957.Grant Williams
John Drew Barrymore obituary in “People” magazine.
Sporadic actor John Drew Barrymore, perhaps best known as the absentee father of Drew Barrymore, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 72.
No cause or details of his passing were released.
In a statement issued by her publicist, Drew, 29, said: “He was a cool cat. Please smile when you think of him.”
John Drew Barrymore’s parents were actress Dolores Costello and the fabled John Barrymore, who was part of a stage and screen dynasty that included brother Lionel Barrymore and sister Ethel Barrymore.
Drew’s grandfather was the colorful Barrymore – as famous for his magnificent profile as he was for his boozing. He died of pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver in 1942, though, by then, he had been divorced from Costello since 1935, when their son was barely 3. John Drew, sometimes known as John Jr., claimed he saw his father only once.
In the ’50s, John Drew, already battling well-publicized liquor and drug problems, appeared in such movies as The Sundowners, High Lonesome, Quebec, The Big Night, Thunderbirds andWhile the City Sleeps.
He frequently dropped out of projects, however, or arrived on the set late and unprepared. There were also problems with drunken driving and domestic violence. “I’m not a nice, clean-cut American kid at all,” he told the Associated Press in 1962, by which time he had left Hollywood to make movies in Europe. “I’m just a human being. Those things just happen.”
Drew Barrymore was his daughter by his third wife, Ildiko Jaid Barrymore. He is also survived by John D. Barrymore, a son by his first wife, actress Cara Williams (the 1960 sitcom Pete and Gladys). Barrymore’s second wife was Gaby Palazzolo. All three unions ended in divorce.
Susan Peters was born in 1921 in Spokane, Washington. She was signed to a contract with MGM and was featured in a good role in “Random Harvest” with Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson. She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. Other roles included “Song of Russia” and “Keep Your Powder Dry”. In 1945 she suffered spinal injuries while duck hunting, when a gun went off and a bullet lodged in her spinal cord. She was confined to a wheelchair which had a limiting effect on her career. Her last major film role was in “Sign of the Ram” in 1948. She starred in a TV series, “Miss Susan” in 1951 but died the following year, aged only 31.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
War-era MGM had a lovely, luminous star in the making with Susan Peters. She possessed a creative talent and innate sensitivity that would surely have reigned as a leading Hollywood player for years to come had not a tragic and cruel twist of fate taken everything away from her.
She was born Suzanne Carnahan in Spokane, Washington on July 3, 1921, the eldest of two children. Her father, Robert, a construction engineer, was killed in an automobile accident in 1928, and the remaining family relocated to Los Angeles to live with Susan’s grandmother. Attending various schools growing up, she excelled in athletics and studied drama in her senior year at Hollywood High School where she was spotted by a talent scout. Following graduation, she found an agent and enrolled at Max Reinhardt‘s School of Dramatic Arts. While performing in a showcase, she was spotted by a Warner Bros. casting agent, tested and signed to the studio in 1940.
Making her debut as an extra Susan and God (1940), she saw little progress and eventually became frustrated at the many bit parts thrown her way. Billed by her given name Suzanne Carnahan (known for possessing a zesty stubborn streak, she had refused to use the studio’s made-up stage name of Sharon O’Keefe), Susan was barely given a line in many of her early movies. She did test for a lead role in Kings Row (1942) but lost out to Betty Field. Susan’s first big break came with the Humphrey Bogart potboiler The Big Shot (1942), where she was fourth-billed and had the second female lead. Dropped by Warners, MGM picked up her contract and adopted a new stage name for her, Susan Peters. In the Marjorie Main vehicle Tish (1942), Susan earned a co-starring part and met actor Richard Quine on the set. Quine played her husband in the film. The couple also appeared together in the film Dr. Gillespie’s New Assistant (1942), and married in real life in November of 1943.
Susan won the role of Ronald Colman‘s sister’s teenager stepdaughter (and a potential love interest of the Colman character) in the profoundly moving film Random Harvest(1942) and earned an Academy Award nomination for “Best Supporting Actress” for her efforts. Her potential in that film was quickly discovered and she continued to offer fine work in lesser movies such as the WWII spy tale Assignment in Brittany (1943), the slight comedy Young Ideas (1943) and the romantic war drama Song of Russia (1944), in which she touchingly played Nadya, a young Soviet pianist who falls for Robert Taylor. For these performances, Susan was named “Star of Tomorrow” along with Van Johnsonand others.
Then tragedy struck a little more than a year after her wedding day. While on a 1945 New Year’s Day duck-hunting trip in the San Diego area with her husband and friends, one of the hunting rifles accidentally discharged when Susan went to retrieve it. The bullet lodged in her spine. Permanently paralyzed from the waist down, MGM paid for her bills but was eventually forced to settle her contract. Susan valiantly forged on with frequent work on radio. In 1946 Susan and Richard happily adopted a son, Timothy Richard, but two years later she divorced Quine — some say she felt she was too much of a burden.
Appearing with Lana Turner as a demure soldier’s wife in Keep Your Powder Dry (1945), which was filmed before but released a year after her accident, Susan made a film “comeback” with The Sign of the Ram (1948), the melodramatic tale of an embittered, manipulative, wheelchair-bound woman who tries to destroy the happiness of all around her, but audiences were not all that receptive. She also turned to the stage with tours of “The Glass Menagerie,” in which she played the crippled daughter Laura from a wheelchair (with permission from playwright Tennessee Williams), and “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” opposite Tom Poston, wherein she performed the role of poet and chronic invalid Elizabeth Barrett Browning entirely from a couch.
In March of 1951 she portrayed an Ironside-like lawyer in the TV series Martinsville, U.S.A. (1951) but the show ran for less than one season, folding in December of that year. After this, the increasingly frail actress, who was constantly racked with pain, went into virtual seclusion. Suffering from acute depression and plagued by kidney problems and pneumonia, she finally lost her will to live and died at the age of 31 on October 23, 1952, of kidney failure and starvation, prompted by a developing eating disorder (anorexia nervosa). It was a profoundly sad and most unfortunate end to such a beautiful, courageous spirit and promising talent.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
TCM overview:
A lovely and promising actress who worked her way up the ranks at MGM, Susan Peters’ career was cut short by one of the worst tragedies to affect the Hollywood acting community during the 1940s. After an unpromising start, the Spokane native had her first substantial part in the MGM film “Tish” (1942) and soon became a regular player for the studio. Her most famous credit was the celebrated drama “Random Harvest” (1942), where Peters impressed greatly in a supporting capacity. With an Oscar nomination now on her résumé, she demonstrated further promise in such productions as “Song of Russia” (1944), in which she essayed the female lead role opposite Robert Taylor. In a tragic turn of events, Peters was crippled in a hunting accident, but within a few months, she had resumed acting via radio assignments and was determined to move forward. Her movie days were over after only one more picture, but Peters earned praise for stage performances in travelling revivals of “The Glass Menagerie” and “The Barretts of Wimpole Street,” and she also headlined her own television series for a time. Unfortunately, the strain of dealing with her condition caused Peters to plunge into depression and anorexia nervosa, both of which sapped her will to live and contributed to her premature death at age 31. Although the final years of her life were heartbreaking, Peters displayed considerable courage and the praise for her acting, both before and after the tragedy, was well-deserved.
Susan Peters was born Suzanne Carnahan on July 3, 1921 in Spokane, WA, but her formative years were spent predominantly in Portland, OR and Los Angeles. She gained her first acting experience in plays at Hollywood High and came to the attention of Lee Sholem, a talent scout and future B-movie director. After acting classes and further stage work, Peters was offered a contract with Warner Brothers. Her first film appearance came with an uncredited bit in the Joan Crawford vehicle “Susan and God” (1940) and she graduated to more screen time and actual billing in the Errol Flynn/Olivia DeHavilland Western “Santa Fe Trail” (1940). After a few more virtually anonymous turns, Peters began to receive bigger opportunities, first in such B-pictures as “Scattergood Pulls the Strings” (1941) and “Three Sons o’ Guns” (1941), and then somewhat more promising fare, like the Humphrey Bogart crime drama “The Big Shot” (1942).
However, it soon became clear that Warner was not interested in doing much with Peters and the studio opted not to renew her contract. Fortunately, she had come to the attention of MGM, which cast Peters in the Marjorie Main dramedy “Tish” (1942). The fitfully entertaining production came and went without much notice, but proved important for Peters: she fell in love with co-star Richard Quine and the pair married the following year. “Tish” had also provided Peters with her first part of any real substance and, impressed with the results, MGM offered her a contract. It was soon decided that she would be the best choice for a role in their romantic drama “Random Harvest” (1942) and it was that film that finally brought Peters notoriety. Cast as the step niece of Ronald Colman Peters’ poignant performance earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Now busy at Metro, Peters’ career followed the usual path for a young contract player on the way up. She was utilized in the franchise entry “Andy Hardy’s Double Life” (1942), as well as B-movies like “Assignment in Brittany” (1943) and “Young Ideas” (1943). Peters was also the female lead of the more prominent production “Song of Russia” (1944), which gained unwanted attention a few years later when it ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee for its pro-Russia sympathies. Sadly, Peters’ life changed forever on Jan. 1, 1945. While out on a family hunting excursion, she picked a rifle up off the ground only to have it discharge and lodge a bullet in her spine. The accident left Peters completely paralyzed from the waist down. After a month in hospital, she recovered enough to be discharged. Peters’ last effort prior to the accident, the Lana Turner “gals in uniform” war drama “Keep Your Powder Dry” (1945), was released in the months that followed and while MGM had been paying her medical bills, Peters asked to be released from her contract.
To her considerable credit, Peters determined that she would not let the condition limit her. After spending some of her initial recovery time writing, she was back working that September in a radio staging of “Seventh Heaven” opposite Van Johnson. She was also able to soon maneuver around effectively in her home and in a specially designed car with hand controls which allowed Peters to drive. In a further extension of her resolve to lead a regular life, Peters also decided to become a mother. In 1946, she and Quine adopted boy whom they named Timothy. Peters also returned to movie screens as the star of “Sign of the Ram” (1948), where she played a wheelchair-bound woman who uses her paralysis as a way of manipulating family members. Unfortunately, it was not a success and no more film offers were forthcoming. During this time, she and Quine also divorced. This was done at Peters’ request, in an apparent attempt to release him from any obligation to care for her.
Peters next turned her attentions to the stage and received good notices for revivals of “The Glass Menagerie” and “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.” In both cases, Peters proved up to the challenge and continued her work in each when they went on tour. Television also offered Peters a new opportunity with the daytime series “Miss Susan” (NBC, 1951). Staged live in Philadelphia, the 15-minute legal serial starred the actress as an Ohio attorney who continues on with her obligations, despite having been disabled in a car accident. However, after production of “Miss Susan” came to an end, Peters sank into a deep depression and spent time in a sanitarium. Although she regained her health sufficiently to do some more stage acting, Peters’ remaining years were spent in a downward spiral of psychological problems and anorexia nervosa. Those conditions, coupled with pneumonia and kidney issues, brought about her passing on Oct. 23, 1952. Peters was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
