Matt Dillon was one of the famous ‘brat pack’ of the early 1980’s. His movies include “Little Darlings”, “Over the Edge” and “Rumble Fish”. He was born in New Rochelle in 1964.
IMDB entry:
Originally a teen star (generally in “troubled youth” roles), who has since matured into one of Hollywood’s most enjoyable actors to watch on screen with a wonderful versatility in his acting range, tall, lean and handsome Matt Dillon was born in February 1964 in New Rochelle, New York, and was discovered by pure chance. Talent scouts were roaming the halls of Hommocks School, spied the good-looking Dillon, and asked him to attend a casting call. He showed up, put on a swagger and petulant attitude for the casting director and landed his first film role, appearing in Over the Edge (1979), a “troubled-youth” film about bored Colorado teenagers fighting developers, their parents and the police. His next role was as a teen bully who gets his comeuppance in the “feel-good” movie My Bodyguard (1980). He was the object of teenage female desire in Little Darlings (1980), and followed that as a poor boy eloping with a rich girl in Liar’s Moon(1982).
Dillon was now a hot property, and his next three film roles were in quality productions of best-selling novels, by author S.E. Hinton, that cemented him as the US’ #1 teen star. First, he starred as a fatherless country boy in Tex (1982), then he headlined a cast of superb young actors, including Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze, in the moving The Outsiders (1983), and, finally, he was back in trouble once more in the superb Rumble Fish (1983). As his looks matured, Dillon moved into broader roles such as a Brooklyn teenager from a hard-working middle class family, who gets involved in the lives of the wealthy members of the “El Flamingo Beach Club” on Long Island, in 1963, inThe Flamingo Kid (1984). He made his first foray into adult action with Gene Hackman in the thriller Target (1985), followed by several B-grade romantic efforts, before striking gold with the critics with his performance in the uncompromising ‘Gus van Sant’ film about drug addicts, Drugstore Cowboy (1989). Unfortunately, his next few films fell back into a degree of mediocrity until another intriguing performance as a young schizophrenic in The Saint of Fort Washington (1993), then another romantic comedy role in Mr. Wonderful (1993). He worked again with van Sant as naive husband “Larry Maretto” opposite murderous Nicole Kidman in the icy thriller To Die For (1995).
Dillon remained busy and turned in excellent performances in the sexy thriller of murder and double-crosses, Wild Things (1998). He was hilarious as a sleazy private eye lovestruck by Cameron Diaz in the box-office smash There’s Something About Mary(1998). He starred in the black comedy One Night at McCool’s (2001), made his feature film directorial debut with City of Ghosts (2002), had a day that goes from bad to worse in Employee of the Month (2004). And, for his work in the Best Picture Academy Award winner Crash (2004), Dillon received a long-overdue Oscar nomination, as Best Supporting Actor.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: firehouse44@hotmail.co
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Alan Ladd was one of the major movie stars of the 1940’s and 50’s. He was born in 1913 in Hot Springs.. He had a leading role in the film noir “This Gun For Hire” opposite Veronica Lake in 1942. His films include “O.S.S.”, “The Glass Key”, “Calcutta” and of course the classic Western “Shane”. He died at the age of 50 in 1964.
TCM overview:
A stoic, masculine icon despite his diminutive frame, Alan Ladd became an overnight star by playing Raven, a sensitive hit man, in “This Gun for Hire” (1942). His soft-spoken strength set him apart from his less subtle peers, instantly endearing him to audiences who admired his new brand of onscreen masculinity. During the 1940s, Ladd one of the era’s top box office draws for many years. Frequently cast opposite Veronica Lake, he scored with the noir smashes “The Glass Key” (1942) and “The Blue Dahlia” (1946), in the adventure “Two Years before the Mast” (1946), and in the adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” (1949). His most iconic role came as the mysterious former gunslinger “Shane” (1953), considered to be one of the all-time greatest Westerns of all time. Ladd continued his streak of playing tough guys with films like “Hell below Zero” (1954) and “All the Young Men” (1960) opposite Sidney Poitier, and ended his career with a supporting turn in “The Carpetbaggers” (1964). After a lifetime of struggling with personal demons and a tumultuous childhood, the actor attempted suicide in 1962; on Jan. 29, 1964, he was found dead of an accidental drug overdose. His children, most notably film executive Alan Ladd, Jr., continued the family business. Although he rarely received the critical acclaim of many of his noir-era peers, Alan Ladd became one of the most popular movie stars of all time – a magnetic, unique performer who left a lasting mark on Hollywood in more ways than one.
Born Sept. 3, 1913 in Hot Springs, AR, Alan Walbridge Ladd was the son of an English mother who struggled to keep the family afloat after becoming a widow when her son was four. Tragedy struck again a year later when the child accidentally burned down their apartment, causing them to move to Oklahoma City, OK, where she married a housepainter. His childhood marked by malnourishment and stints of homelessness, Ladd grew up short and small of stature, which led to years of taunts from his peers. The family moved to California when he was eight, and the boy was forced to pick fruit, deliver papers and sweep floors to make ends meet. Although he appeared to be frail, Ladd demonstrated a world-class ability in swimming and track and began training for the 1932 Olympics in earnest. His dreams of glory were cut short by an injury, but his discipline paid off in other aspects of his life, helping him maintain a series of odd jobs that led to him opening his own hamburger shop, Tiny’s Patio, so-called in honor of his family nickname. So poor that when he married his high school sweetheart he could not afford to have her move in with him, Ladd applied his amazing work ethic to garnering small radio and theatrical roles and a job as a Warner Bros. studio grip.
Rejected at first for major film work because of his diminutive frame, Ladd’s persistence on the radio and in minor film roles helped him become one of talent scout Sue Carol’s clients, and she orchestrated his ascent with a string of minor roles, including a role as a reporter in “Citizen Kane” (1941). Divorced from his first wife, he married the controlling Carol in 1942, who helped him score a studio contract at Paramount. That same year, she was critical in her husband being cast in his star-making role, playing hitman-with-a-conscience Raven in Graham Greene’s “This Gun for Hire” (1942). Ladd’s stylish, ultra-serious persona immediately clicked with audiences – particularly female – who responded to his new brand of onscreen masculinity with a layer of vulnerability underneath. Showing enormous chemistry with co-star Veronica Lake, the two would often be paired together in several Paramount productions, as they brought out the best in each other; their cool, blond looks meshed perfectly, but equally important was the fact that she was the only actress on the lot shorter than Ladd.
Although critics generally overlooked him and Ladd himself would claim not to understand his own appeal, he became one of the most popular male actors of the 1940s and one of the era’s top box office draws year after year. He reunited with Lake for the Dashiell Hammett noir classic “The Glass Key” (1942) and earned his first leading man role as the titular gangster “Lucky Jordan” (1942). Ladd’s professional ascent continued with his acclaimed turn in the maritime adventure “Two Years before the Mast” (1946), the espionage thriller “O.S.S.” (1946) and another noir smash opposite Lake, the Raymond Chandler-penned classic “The Blue Dahlia” (1946). Empowered by his success and ever-enterprising, Ladd formed his own production company which spawned his own radio series about a mystery novelist in search of new plot ideas and adventures called “Box 13.” He scored another success in the Western “Whispering Smith” (1948), toplined the sleek 1949 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” and essayed a wrongly imprisoned medical student ready to mutiny in the drama “Botany Bay” (1953).
Frequently cast in tough-guy roles in rugged tales of adventure, Ladd’s most iconic role came in the masculine weeper “Shane” (1953). As the mysterious titular former gunslinger, Ladd played a man trying to escape from his past, who bonds with the young son of his employer, serving as a male role model and surrogate father. Forced by circumstances to use his deadly talents to ensure justice, Shane is wounded in the final battle but retains his powerful self-control and sense of heroism, riding away to an uncertain fate as the young boy plaintively cries “Shane! Come back!” in the film’s most famous scene. Considered a masterpiece of both the Western genre and of film itself, “Shane” was nominated for six Oscars and won for Best Cinematography. While Ladd was overlooked, the cultural impact of his turn could not be overstated, and the character’s legacy would be referenced repeatedly in films as diverse as Clint Eastwood’s “Pale Rider” (1985), Jean-Claude Van Damme’s “Nowhere to Run” (1993) and Samuel L. Jackson’s “The Negotiator” (1998). “Shane” proved Ladd’s professional high point, and epitomized his unique brand of cold-but-caring strength. Although he continued to work, most often playing badasses in films like “Paratrooper” (1953), “Hell below Zero” (1954) and “The Black Night” (1954), Ladd’s professional ascent slowed. He formed a new production company to release his films, including the racially charged Korean War drama “All the Young Men” (1960) opposite Sidney Poitier.
While he enjoyed widespread acclaim from audiences, in his personal life, Ladd was troubled by many personal demons. Early in his career, after his stepfather’s death, his mother had moved in with his young family and then, battling depression, killed herself. Ladd continued the cycle when, in November 1962, he was found unconscious with a bullet wound near his heart after a failed suicide attempt. The studio rushed to cover it up, calling it a gun-related accident. The actor’s last screen role came with a supporting turn in “The Carpetbaggers” (1964), but tragically, he never saw its release. On Jan. 29, 1964, Alan Ladd was found dead in Palm Springs, CA of a drug overdose, which was ruled accidental. Besides his own legacy, both onscreen and in the hearts of fans, Ladd left behind several children who would continue the family business, keeping the family name at the forefront. These included motion picture executive Alan Ladd, Jr. -famous for being the one executive to greenlight a film called “Star Wars” (1977) at 20th Century Fox – actress Alana Ladd, actor David Ladd (who married Cheryl Ladd) and actress Jordan Ladd. Although his story ended tragically, Alan Ladd displayed immense discipline and ambition, carving out his own share of pop culture immortality on the strengths of his inimitable and mysterious charisma.
By Jonathan Riggs
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Doug McClure is fondly remembered for his role as ‘Trampas’ in TV”s “The Virginian”. He was born in 1935 in Glendale, California. He had some very minor roles in major movies of the late 1950’s such as “Enemy Below” with starred Robert Mitchum and Curd Jurgens and “South Pacific”. “The Virginian” ran from 1962 until 1971. In the late 1960’s he starred in such movies as “Beau Geste” and “The King’s Pirate”. Hos best film was probably “Shenandoah” with James Stewart in 1965. Doug McClure sadly died in 1995.
David Shipman’s “Independent” obituary:
Doug McClure had blond good looks and an easy, ready smile. He was so laid back that he almost wasn’t there. And with his untroubled countenance, he was a natural man of the West, enlivening The Virginian, the first television western series to have 90-minute episodes. In The Virginian, which ran from 1962 to 1970, McClure played Trampas, friend of the ranch foreman of the title, played by James Drury. For five years before the series started, McClure, born and educated in Los Angeles, had small parts in the local filmindustry, starting with a submarine drama, The Enemy Below (1957), followed by playing a Malibu Beach loafer in Gidget (1959), an anodyne teen romance – one of so many which Hollywood turned out during the Eisenhower years. Its director, Paul Wendkos, immediately put McClure in a similar tale, Because They’re Young, a college tale which had a bit more bite. Television stardom beckoned in The Overland Trail, as William Bendix’s sidekick, and in a private eye series, Checkmate, and John Huston made him Burt Lancaster’s younger brother in his western The Unforgiven (1960) He is new son-in-law in Shenandoah (1965), but went down with the others in Beau Geste (1966): in the title-role Guy Stockwell did not efface memories of Ronald Colman (1926) or Gary Cooper (1939), admittedly classic versions of a now dated tale. As Beau’s brother John, McClure was neither here nor there, but as much might be said of Ralph Forbes (1926) or Ray Milland (1939).
In 1971 McClure starred in The Law and Jake Wyler, one of several television projects produced and written by the prolific team of Richard Levinson and William Link. He was one of two parolees – James McEachin was the other – helping the judge do some detective work. The judge was Bette Davis, whose agent had indicated that she was ready to do a television series. But that wasn’t to be: nobody liked the pilot, which went out on NBC as a telemovie in 1972, with added footage.
In 1975 McClure came to Britain to star in The Land That Time Forgot, based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1918 science fiction novel. It was strictly double-bill fare, if not exactly a cheapie, and he appeared in three follow-ups: At the Earth’s Core (1976), The People That Time Forgot (1977) and Warlords of Atlantis (1978). Amicus produced, with co-operation on the last two from American International Pictures, temporarily deserting teenagers on motor-bikes. Fighting dinosaurs and such, McClure was energetic, especially as he looked as if he had had a heavy night.
Later movie appearances included Cannonball Run II (1983) and Omega Syndrome (1986). McClure has been regularly parodied as Troy McClure, an ageing star of the 1950s, in the television series The Simpsons, usually introducing promotional videos. Maverick(1994) had Mel Gibson in James Garner’s old television role, with Garner in support, reminding us how entertaining he always was; and McClure, in his last movie role, with a “walk-on” as one of the poker-players.
David Shipman Doug McClure, actor: born Glendale, California 11 May 1934; married three times; died Los Angeles 5 February 1995.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
“”Duffy’ was a particularly tiresome film about two English boys who plan to rob their millionaire father of his fortune. It was all cross and double-cross , set in one of the new Mediterranean fun-spots, Tangier, with every modish device available to it’s creators – pop-art, pop-music,pop-art photography, Susannah York and a new superstar James Coburn. Coburn played a con-man who helps the boys, a carefree, grinning, stubbornly heterosexual, lone Belmondoesque American and the film because it had no higher inspiration, kept him as firmly at the centre as anything that Theda Bara ever made.He was decidedly not tiresome” in David Shipman’s “The Great Movie Stars” (1972).
James Coburn was a terrific character actor in the early 1960’s who suddenly became a star with “Our Man Flint ” in 1966. Before that he had supported Yul Brynner in “The Magnificent Seven” in 1960, James Garner in “The Americanisation of Emily” and Steve McQueen and Garner again in “The Great Escape”. He won an Oscar for his performance in “Afflication”. He died in 2002 at the age of 74.
Veronica Horwell’s “Guardian” obituary:
One scene in John Sturges’s film The Magnificent Seven (1960) plugs directly into the power of its source, The Seven Samurai: the entrance of James Coburn, who has died aged 74, as Britt, “the best with gun and knife”.
He does little, unfolding himself like his own jackknife from post-cattle-drive repose to answer an unsought challenge to a duel, and shouldering his saddle to move on after winning effortlessly. He says less, just “You lost” and “Call it” – Coburn made the word laconic sound gabby. And yet he is the complete American samurai: “Acting,” he said decades later, “comes between the words – ego stops you telling the truth.”
Unsurprisingly, Coburn had seen the original Kurosawa film 15 times while studying acting with Stella Adler in New York. Surprisingly, he got the part he coveted, as the master swordsman, after meeting the already-cast Robert Vaughn in the street not long before shooting began. Coburn was persistent and available, unlike veteran character options.
He had been around the prairie a few times by then. He came from a farm in Laurel, Nebraska, although the family moved to California during the depression. After studying drama at Los Angeles City College, he alternated between advancing on television as far as the leads in such unconventional and shortlived series as Klondike, and Acapulco (both 1960), and supporting in films, debuting in the 1958 Budd Boetticher western, Ride Lonesome.
His faint resemblance to Lee Marvin, in naso-labial fold and stage quality bass-baritone voice, brought work as a lean heavy or young character man, notably in Hell Is For Heroes (1962), The Great Escape and Charade (both 1963), and A High Wind In Jamaica (1965).
In the back-up role as an army scout, in Major Dundee (1965) – the start of his buddy relationship with director Sam Peckinpah – Coburn was the strongest presence in the picture. Film lexicographer David Thomson thought that his humour and easy sexiness dated him, made him seem simian, especially with that toothed smile. But around 1965 he was very hot, starring in the Bond-like films Our Man Flint and In Like Flint.
Coburn was a bridge between cool, in the Sinatra swinger sense, and counter-culture cool in Theodore J Flicker’s prescient satire, The President’s Analyst (1968), which was produced by Coburn’s company and became a critical success, prefiguring the Saturday Night Live comedic sensibility.
He missed out on the neurosis that powered post-Jack Nicholson actors, and on the impassivity of Clint Eastwood-style faces – in fact, he did a western for Sergio Leone, A Fistful Of Dyamite (1972), playing an Irish explosives expert, and laughing zestfully all the way through. He was the right man for Peckinpah, for whom he did the most impressive work of his life as the sheriff in Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973).
Then, on the eastern front, he exhibited that ferocious grin, as the Wehrmacht corporal drawling “I hate all officers” in Cross Of Iron (1977), which he also co-scripted. The following year, Peckinpah trusted him sufficiently to let him direct the second unit on the roadie movie, Convoy.
Coburn made the newer fellers look stiff and naff, but the post-1975 market was massive for naff. He was too late the hero. Most stars did not have to maintain the cash flow that he did, by playing the private detective in a television version of The Dain Curse – a ringer for its author Dashiell Hammett – or striding into the saloon bar in Schlitz Lite commercials.
The critic Pauline Kael once suggested that Coburn looked like the child of the liaison between Lieutenant Pinkerton and Madame Butterfly, and he took Zen Buddhism seriously, moving deep into meditation and oriental art. Japan acknowledged his honorary samurai qualities; he was so approved a masculine presence that he became an icon for its leading cigarette brand, and funded his old age by exporting rare cars there.
At 50, at the beginning of years of rheumatoid arthritic pain – which he overcame, although it crippled him – Coburn settled for occasional cameo roles in the John Huston mode – all big cigar, chuckle and thumbs, always giving the screen a lift, if a mite hammy indoors in a suit (he lopes off with bits of Robert Altman’s The Player, 1992, and the 1994 Mel Gibson vehicle, Maverick). Who he might have been, unfolded in all his angry power, was finally seen in Paul Schrader’s Affliction (1997), where the director wanted him as Nick Nolte’s abusive father because he was “large physically” – 6ft 3in – “and represented another generation of Hollywood manhood. You’re frightened for Nolte!”
“I finally got one right,” said Coburn, collecting his Oscar for best supporting actor in 1999, for the Affliction performance. But the expected offers didn’t come, except to play more nasty bastards. He wasn’t bitter; he was fit and still hoping, right up until he died of a heart attack listening to music at home with his second wife, Paula.
His first marriage, to Beverly Kelly, ended in a spectacularly expensive divorce; they had a son and a daughter.
· James Coburn, actor, born August 31 1928; died November 19 2002
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed also online here.
Patrick Swayze starred in many excellent adventure thrillers such as “Point Break” and “Road House”. He also starred in two of the most popular romantic movies of all time, “Dirty Dancing” in 1987 and “Ghost” in 1990. Sadly he died in 2009 at the age of 57.
Peter Bradshaw’s “Guardian” obituary:
Patrick Swayze, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 57, was a leading man with rugged, unpretty looks and a lean dancer’s physique, who enjoyed staggering success in Reagan-Bush-era America thanks to two classic movie roles. In Dirty Dancing (1987), he was Johnny Castle, a summer-camp dance teacher from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love with one of his pupils, Frances “Baby” Houseman, a teenage girl from a posh, uptight family, whose world is rocked by Johnny’s steamy dance moves. At the end of the movie, Johnny strides into the dance hall to find that she has been forced to sit demurely with her parents at a table well away from the action. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!” he declares, and whisks her centre-stage for some spectacular choreography. The image of the blonde princess emotionally liberated by the bad boy with the heart of gold was adored by movie audiences: it was irresistibly similar to that of Diana, Princess of Wales, dancing with John Travolta at the White House two years before.
Three years later, in Ghost (1990), Swayze was Sam Wheat, a yuppie banker deeply in love with his ceramic-artist fiancee Molly, played by Demi Moore. Sam is killed by a mugger in the movie’s sensational opening scene, but returns as a ghost to watch over the love of his life. It became America’s favourite date movie, with a much-loved, much-parodied scene in which a half-naked Sam embraces Molly from behind as she caresses an oozing brown pot upwards into shape, to the accompaniment of the Righteous Brothers singing Unchained Melody. This film, too, partook a little of the changing zeitgeist: Swayze’s gentle phantom yuppie showed an America interested in a more vulnerable, caring leading man as an antidote to the triumphalist 1980s.
After these movies, Swayze never quite progressed to the A-list, though he did well as the charismatic surfer-dude in Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 action-thriller Point Break, opposite Keanu Reeves. A workmanlike career unfolded, without letting Swayze’s personality cohere into a clear star-identity. Nevertheless, he reportedly turned down an offer of $7m to appear in a Dirty Dancing sequel and, when criticised for his choice of film roles, said that he was “fed up with that Hollywood blockbuster mentality”.
Typecasting, and a battle with alcoholism, hampered any rise to the top. He was the decent American expatriate in Calcutta in Roland Joffé’s City of Joy (1992), and the wacky drag artist in Beeban Kidron’s To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995). As an ex-con, Jack Crews, in Black Dog (1998), he had to drive a truck full of illicit weapons across country.
It wasn’t until his scene-stealing turn in Richard Kelly’s cult-classic psychological nightmare Donnie Darko (2001), in which he played the sinister motivational speaker Jim Cunningham, that Swayze’s career found a new act. His looks were now those of a character actor, and a new generation of moviegoers responded to his muscular presence and direct address to the camera.
Swayze was born in Houston, Texas. His mother, Patsy, was a choreographer with the Houston Jazz and Ballet Company, and she drove Patrick hard as a boy towards a career in dance – and specifically in ballet, not an easy choice for a young Texan male. Swayze became a sports star in high school and got an athletics scholarship to Houston’s San Jacinto College.
After graduating, he moved to New York City, where he became the principal dancer at the Eliot Feld ballet company, but recurrent injuries compelled a strategic move into the theatre. On Broadway, he tore up the stage as Danny Zuko in Grease, which attracted the notice of Hollywood, so he moved to Los Angeles.
His big break came courtesy of Francis Ford Coppola, who allowed Swayze to develop his greaser persona in the teen drama The Outsiders (1983), the movie that also launched Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe. His breakthrough in Dirty Dancing played perfectly to Swayze’s strengths: dancing, masculinity, sweaty sensuality. It became one of the first films to find a vast audience in the booming new home-video market. After Ghost, People magazine voted him one of the “sexiest people alive”.
After that, things took a turn for the worse. His personal life was troubled: deeply affected by his father’s death from a heart attack and his sister’s suicide in 1994, Swayze repeatedly relapsed into alcoholism. He broke both legs in a horse-riding stunt in 1996 filming the HBO movie Letters from a Killer, which caused career stagnation and depression. There was further controversy when Swayze made an emergency landing in Arizona in 2000 in his twin-engine Cessna, and appeared to attempt to remove a stash of beer and wine from the plane.
After his comeback in Donnie Darko, Swayze presented a calmer, more relaxed face to the world. His likeable, easygoing personality struck a chord with London stage audiences when he played Nathan Detroit in the West End revival of Guys and Dolls in 2006. He also played opposite Kristin Scott Thomas and Rowan Atkinson in the British comedy Keeping Mum (2005).
In 2008, soon after he had filmed a pilot for a television show, The Beast, in which he was to star as an FBI agent, Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He underwent chemotherapy and drug treatment while shooting the subsequent series, which was shown on US television earlier this year. His last film was Powder Blue (2009).
He is survived by his wife, the actor and dancer Lisa Niemi, his childhood sweetheart from Houston, whom he married in 1975. He described her as “the smartest chick I’d ever met” and cited her as the inspiration for the song She’s Like the Wind, which he co-wrote and which featured on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.
• Patrick Wayne Swayze, dancer, actor and singer, born 18 August 1952; died 14 September 2009
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Candice BergenElizabeth Hartman and Candice Bergen
Candice Bergen was born in 1946 in Beverly Hills, California. She is the daughter of Frances Bergen and Edgar Bergen. She first came to fame as ‘Libby’ in “The Group” in 1966. Her movies include “The Sand Pebbles” opposite Steve McQueen, “Carnal Knowledge” opposite Jack Nicholson and “Starting Over” with Burt Reynolds. She also starred in the long running TV series “Murphy Brown” and “Boston Legal”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
One cool, eternally classy lady, Candice Bergen was elegantly poised for trendy “ice princess” stardom when she first arrived on the screen, but she gradually reshaped that débutante image both on- and off-camera. A staunch, outspoken feminist with a decisive edge, she went on to take a sizable portion of these contradicting qualities to film and, most particularly, to late 1980s television. The daughter of famed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and former actress and “Chesterfield Girl” Frances Bergen, the Beverly Hills born-and-bred Candice was surrounding by Hollywood glitter and glamor from day one. At the age of 6, she made her radio debut on her father’s show. Of extreme privilege, she attended Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, the Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., and then went abroad to the Montesano (finishing) School in Switzerland.
Although she began taking art history and creative drawing at the University of Pennsylvania, she did not graduate due to less-than-stellar grades. In between studies, she also worked as a Ford model in order to buy cameras for her new passion–photography. Her Grace Kelly-like glacial beauty deemed her an ideal candidate for Ivy League patrician roles, and Candice made an auspicious film debut while still a college student portraying the Vassar-styled lesbian member of Sidney Lumet‘s The Group (1966) in an ensemble that included other lovely up-and-comers including Joan Hackett, Jessica Walter and Joanna Pettet. Although that film was a box-office flop, Candice’s second film in 1966, The Sand Pebbles (1966), was a critical and commercial hit and was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Film offers started coming her way, both here and especially abroad (spurred on by her love for travel).
Other than her top-notch roles as the co-ed who comes between Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel in Carnal Knowledge (1971) and her prim American lady kidnapped by Moroccan sheik Sean Connery in The Wind and the Lion (1975), her performances were deemed a bit too aloof to really stand out among the crowd. During this time, she found a passionate second career as a photographer and photojournalist. A number of her works went on to appear in an assortment of magazines including Life, Playboy and Esquire. Most of Candice’s other late 1960s and 1970s films were either unmemorable or dismissed altogether, including the bizarre futuristic comedy The Day the Fish Came Out(1967); the forgotten mystery The Magus (1968); the epic-sized bomb The Adventurers(1970); the campus comedy Getting Straight (1970); the disturbingly violent Soldier Blue(1970); Lina Wertmüller‘s long-winded and notoriously long-titled Italian drama A Night Full of Rain (1978); and the soapy, inferior sequel to Love Story (1970), Oliver’s Story(1978).
However, things picked up toward the end of the decade when the seemingly humorless Candice took a swipe at comedy. She made history as the first female guest host of Saturday Night Live and then showed an equally amusing side of her in the dramedyStarting Over (1979) as Burt Reynolds tone-deaf ex-wife, enjoying a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination in the process. She and Jacqueline Bisset also worked well as a team in George Cukor‘s Rich and Famous (1981), in which her mother Frances Bergencould be glimpsed in a Malibu party scene. Candice also made her Broadway debut in 1985 replacing Sigourney Weaver in David Rabe‘s black comedy Hurlyburly (1998). In 1980, Candice married Louis Malle, the older (by 14 years) French director. They had one child, a daughter named Chloe, in 1985. In the late 1980s, Candice hit a new career plateau on comedy television as the spiky title role on Murphy Brown (1988), giving great gripe as the cynical and competitive anchor/reporter of a television magazine show.
With a superlative supporting cast around her, the CBS sitcom went the distance (ten seasons) and earned Candice a whopping five Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. Television movie roles also came her way as a result with colorful roles ranging from the evil Arthurian temptress “Morgan Le Fey” to an elite, high-classed madam — all many moons away from her initial white-gloved debutantes of the late 1960s. Malle’s illness and subsequent death from cancer in 1995 resulted in Candice maintaining a very low profile for quite some time. Since then, however, she has returned with a renewed vigor (or should I say vinegar) on television, with many of her characters enjoyable extensions of her “Murphy Brown” curmudgeon. After years of working exclusively in television, she returned to the big screen, playing a former beauty queen who attempts to foil Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality (2000), and Reese Witherspoon‘s pretentious would-be mother-in-law in Sweet Home Alabama (2002).
She has continued chomping at the comedy bit, appearing in The In-Laws (2003), The Women (2008), and Bride Wars (2009). In 2005, she joined the cast of Boston Legal(2004) playing a brash, no-nonsense lawyer while trading barbs with a much less seriousWilliam Shatner. She played this role for five seasons, receiving nominations for two Emmys, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Since 2000, she has been married to her second husband, Marshall Rose, who is a Manhattan real estate developer.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.ne
Robert Conrad has had a very successful career on television in such series as “The Wild Wild West” and “Baa Baa Black sheep”. His occasional films include “Pal;m Springs Weekend” in 1963.
TCM overview:
A ruggedly handsome leading man for over three decades on American television, Robert Conrad first gained audiences’ attention as detective Tom Lopaka on the light-hearted crime series “Hawaiian Eye” (ABC, 1959-1963). But his true breakout series came as the 19th-century secret agent James T. West in the tongue-in-cheek Western adventure “The Wild, Wild West” (CBS, 1965-69). The series helped to establish Conrad as an actor who enjoyed doing his own stunts – occasionally to his own physical detriment. In the 1970s, Conrad starred as real-life World War II flying ace Gregory “Pappy” Boyington on the action-comedy series “Baa Baa Black Sheep” (NBC, 1976-78), which he helped to rescue from oblivion by directly lobbying TV station managers after the network canceled the series. He broke out of the tough guy mold on several occasions, most notably in the epic miniseries “Centennial” (1979) and in the title role of the TV-movie “Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy” (1981), but audiences preferred him in the masculine vein of his previous screen incarnations. He enjoyed greater small-screen success as the pitchman for Everyready batteries – where he virtually challenged the viewer to knock the battery off his shoulder – than in any series or TV-movie. Still remarkably fit in his fifth and sixth decades, he continued to star as hard-nosed types in TV-movies and short-lived television shows throughout the 1990s before largely retiring at the turn of the millennium, leaving behind a legacy of tough guy roles fans could never forget.
Born Conrad Robert Falk in Chicago, IL on March 1, 1935, Conrad was the son of publicist Jacqueline Hubbard, who noticed that even at an early age, her son showed an interest in performing. A star athlete in high school, he also worked as a singer in Chicago nightclubs, but was forced to turn to drearier work as a milk truck driver and dock worker after eloping with his first wife, Joan Kenlay, at the age of 17 in 1952. After convincing himself that he was just as capable of becoming a star as any of the leading men on television, he got his first entry into the business through another struggling actor, Nick Adams, who, beginning in 1957, helped him earn an agent through small roles. Conrad – who had changed his name by flipping his first and middle names – toiled for the next few years in largely unheralded bit parts before getting a contract with Warner Bros. There, he found more substantial parts in TV series before landing his first lead as half-Hawaiian detective Tom Lopaka on “Hawaiian Eye.” Despite the show’s popularity and his newfound star status, the job paid poorly and Conrad was forced to continue logging hours in unremarkable projects to make ends meet.
When “Eye” ended its network run in 1963, he attempted to strike out on his own as a film star, but only found work in low-budget projects like “Young Dillinger” (1965), with Nick Adams in the lead and Conrad as “Pretty Boy” Floyd. He also tried to re-launch his singing career with a tour of Australia and Mexico, but the launch of “The Wild, Wild West” in 1965 proved to be the shot in the arm that Conrad’s career needed. Created by Michael Garrison, who had originally optioned Ian Fleming’s “Casino Royale” as a feature film, the TV series was initially an action-packed but mostly serious Western adventure about two Secret Service agents who carried out clandestine missions for President Ulysses S. Grant. Conrad was James West, who provided the fists and the romance, while Emmy nominee Ross Martin was Artemus Gordon, a master of disguise. As the show grew in popularity, it took on a more tongue-in-cheek tone – perhaps to match the increasingly outrageous adventures of James Bond on the big screen – with Conrad facing threats from robots, earthquake machines, and arch-villains like the diminutive Dr. Loveless (Michael Dunn). Conrad could also be counted upon to engage in one or more knock-down, drag-out brawls with evildoers per episode, as well as any manner of stunts, all of which he performed himself with a team of stuntmen. This dedication to the show occasionally resulted in injury for Conrad, including a 12-foot fall from a balcony that resulted in a concussion.
While enjoying the popularity of “West,” Conrad also directed and wrote a Western, “The Bandits” (1967), which marked the film debut of actor Jan-Michael Vincent. Thought not a success, the film launched his career as the occasional director of his own television efforts. After “West” was cancelled in 1969, Conrad struggled to find a worthwhile follow-up on television. Jack Webb’s “The D.A.” (NBC, 1971-72) cast him in a documentary-style procedural about the trials of a deputy district attorney, while “The Adventures of Nick Carter” (1972) was a failed pilot that attempted to exploit his “Wild, Wild West” fan base by casting him as the famed hero of 19th century pulp detective fiction. Conrad later replaced Roy Scheider as the spymaster hero of “Assignment Vienna” (ABC, 1972-73), a drama shot on location in Europe. None of these efforts could attract a substantial audience, however, and Conrad’s attempts to generate a film career met with equal indifference. “Murph the Surf” (1975), based on the real-life exploits of jewel thief Jack Roland Murphy, enjoyed a small cult following, but for the most part, Conrad was finding more employment as pitchman for Everyready batteries. The brawny spots also made him the object of spoofs by Johnny Carson and other TV comics, which Conrad took in stride with considerable good humor.
Conrad finally struck paydirt in 1976 with “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” a World War II series about a group of misfit fliers battling the Japanese in the South Pacific. Buoyed by impressive footage of real aerial dogfights from the Department of Defense, the series found favor with male audiences. For his work, Conrad won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite Male Actor as well as received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. The accolades were not enough to extend the show’s lifespan beyond its debut season, however and NBC pulled the plug on the show at the end of the 1976-77 season. Conrad was unwilling to let the series die without a fight so he attended a meeting of NBC affiliates and made direct appeals to station managers in an attempt to drum up support for the show. The grass roots effort paid off with a revival in 1977 under a new title, “Black Sheep Squadron,” which ran for another season before once again taking the plunge in 1978. Conrad would direct numerous episodes during the show’s network run, and cast his daughter, aspiring actress Nancy Conrad, in a semi-regular role as a military nurse.
During his run on “Black Sheep,” Conrad was also a regular presence on “Battle of the Network Stars” (ABC, 1976-1986), a regular series of TV specials which pitted the stars of each network’s programs against each other in often silly Olympic-style competitions. Conrad captained the NBC team six times between 1976 and 1980, and was the focus of an embarrassing incident that saw him pitching a public fit over his team’s loss to ABC in the 1976 special. He challenged ABC captain Gabe Kaplan to a face-off that would decide the winner of the event, but was defeated by the star of “Welcome Back, Kotter” (ABC, 1975-79) in a foot race. In 1979, Conrad returned to series work in another spy series, “A Man Called Sloane” (NBC, 1979-1980). It failed to find its niche with viewers, but Conrad rebounded with an impressive turn in the ambitious 26-hour miniseries “Centennial,” based on the novel by James Michener. Robert Blake and Charles Bronson were originally considered for the key role of the French Canadian Pasquinel, but Conrad eventually inherited the role, which was among the meatiest parts of his career. An opportunistic trapper and panhandler with two families – one white; one Native American – he pays for his gold lust with his life, but not before fathering two sons who become leaders of the Indian tribes whose competition for land with white settlers comprises much of the miniseries. The role allowed Conrad to show his depth as an actor – something that few of his previous efforts had done.
Conrad got a second chance at exploring a complicated character when he took on infamous Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy in “Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy” for television in 1982. An avowed admirer of Liddy, who served as technical advisor on the project, Conrad threw himself into the part, winning some hard-fought critical respect for his performance. For a brief period in the early 1980s, Conrad appeared to be pursuing opportunities in comedy – he hosted “Saturday Night Live” (NBC, 1975- ) and appeared in the dark political satire “Wrong is Right” (1982) for director Richard Brooks. But his action hero past was never far behind him, thanks to the success of the reunion TV-movies “The Wild Wild West Revisited” (1979) and “More Wild Wild West” (1980), so he settled once again into regular rotation as tough cops and detectives in unmemorable TV-movies.
Conrad returned to series work on three separate occasions during the 1980s and into the following decade. The first was “High Mountain Rangers” (CBS, 1988), with Conrad and his real-life sons Shane and Christian as members of an elite emergency rescue team. Daughter Joan also served as executive producer on the show, which lasted just three months. Remarkably, the show spawned a spin-off, “Jesse Hawkes” (CBS, 1989), which only aired six times before its cancellation. “High Sierra Search and Rescue” (Hallmark, 1995), with Conrad’s second wife, LaVelda Fann, among its cast, also enjoyed an equally brief run. The following year, Conrad made his first appearance in a major theatrical release in over a decade with a brief appearance in the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy “Jingle All the Way” (1996). His dry sense of humor was put to excellent use when he attended the 1997 Golden Raspberry Awards – which celebrated the worst in film entertainment – to accept all three of the trophies awarded to the big-screen adaptation of “The Wild, Wild West” (1997). Conrad had been a vocal opponent of the film version, which cast Will Smith in the role of James West.
After the new millennium, Conrad slowly limited his on-screen appearances to narration jobs for various documentary series and contributing to the DVD releases of “Wild, Wild West.” He settled in California’s High Sierras with his family and gave the impression that he had retired from the entertainment business. He re-surfaced in 2003 after being involved in a car accident that left him and the passenger of the other car in serious condition. Conrad was later found to have a high blood alcohol level at the time of the accident, and was given six months of house arrest and a lengthy probation. Despite rumors that he had suffered permanent injuries as a result of the accident, Conrad went public in 2005 with a bid to run for president of the Screen Actors Guild. He had been an active member during the 1980s, when both he and Charlton Heston formed a conservative unit that helped to unseat the more liberal Edward Asner from the presidency. Conrad’s campaign ended in September of 2005 when he was defeated by Alan Rosenberg.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
“When Richard Widmark deserted villainy the screen lost one of its best villains. He was never so entertaining as a hero. As a hero, to be blunt, he is second-rate – oh, likeable, full of integrity, conscientious and all of that, but when he is tough and cocky it is a long way after Cagney. When he is jaded, he is way behind Bogart and he has hardly a hint of the bravura that made Errol Flynn so attractive to women. Nor – though he is probably a better actor – does he fill the screen quite so well as Burt or Kirk or Chuck. He is, in a word, self-effacing. His interviews made it clear that this is a man who loves his craft rather than the aura of being a big film star. He was not content to play psychopathic killers throughout his career” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years” (1972)
Richard Widmark was one superb actor. He played heroes but he was equally brilliant as villians such as Tommy Udo the giggling psychopath in “Kiss of Death” in 1948 and then in 1951 as the racist thug giving Sidney Poitier a hard time in “No Way Out”. His major movies include “Down To Sea In Ships”, “Yellow Sky”, “The Last Wagon”, “Judgement At Nuremberg” and “Madigan”. He died at the age of 93 in 2008.
Ronald Bergan’s obituary of Richard Widmark in “The Guardian”
You’re Nick Bianco, aren’t you? You’re a big man. I’m Tommy Udo. Imagine me on this cheap rap – big man like me, picked up just for shoving a guy’s ears off his head. Traffic ticket stuff.” These were the first words uttered on screen by Richard Widmark, who has died aged 93. It was one of the most striking debuts in Hollywood history.
The film was Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death (1947), and the nominal stars were Victor Mature and Brian Donlevy. But it was Widmark, in a relatively small part, whom everyone remembered. No matter how far he moved away from Tommy Udo in his long career, even when he played noble characters, that giggling psychopath was always just beneath the surface.
Widmark was born in the farming community of Sunrise, Minnesota, where his Swedish-born father ran the general store. His original ambition was to become a lawyer, so he enrolled at Lake Forest College in Chicago. It was there that he became involved in the dramatic society.
After graduating in 1936, he remained at the college as an instructor in speech and drama. In 1937, while he and a friend were touring Europe on bicycles, they shot a short 8mm documentary about Hitler Youth camps. He then moved to New York, where he worked on radio and landed a few Broadway roles, the best of which were directed by Elia Kazan. It was through Kazan’s influence that Widmark was auditioned by 20th Century Fox and put under contract, and immediately cast in Kiss of Death, for which he was nominated for an Oscar.
Critic James Agee described the character of Tommy Udo thus: “A rather frail fellow with maniacal eyes who uses a sinister kind of falsetto baby talk laced with tittering laughs. It is clear that murder is one of the kindest things he is capable of.” Certainly, Udo seems to delight in pushing an elderly wheelchair-bound woman down a flight of stairs. Of the spine-chilling snigger, Widmark explained that it derived from his nervousness at his first screen role, and “I’ve always had a goofy laugh.”
In the Hollywood tradition of stringent typecasting, Widmark reprised this sadistic character, with slight variations, in his next three movies, all released in 1948. In Street With No Name, he played a crooked fight promoter, wrapped up in a scarf and using inhalers, terrified of catching a cold, who wishes to run his gang “along scientific lines”. In one scene, later toned down to get past the censor, he beats up his wife (Barbara Lawrence), whom he suspects of having tipped off the police.
In Road House, he was a psychotic ex-serviceman pushed over the edge by sexual jealousy, and in the William Wellman western Yellow Sky he was the nastiest of the bank robbers opposing reformed outlaw Gregory Peck.
The last of his fanatical chortling villains was in Joseph Mankiewicz’s No Way Out (1950), in which he played a hospitalised racist hoodlum under the care of a black doctor (Sidney Poitier). So convincing was Widmark that a great deal of Poitier’s anger was genuine. In fact, the two actors became firm friends and appeared together again in two films, The Long Ships (1964) and The Bedford Incident (1965).
From the early 1950s, Widmark edged his way into more sympathetic roles, gradually entering the pantheon of Hollywood heroes. During the transitionary period, he gave one of his best performances in Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950), shot over 60 straight nights on location in London. As a small-time crook with ambitions to be a wrestling promoter, he is forced on the run by a racketeer before being killed and tossed into the Thames.
In the same year, Widmark crossed sides in Kazan’s Panic in the Streets, playing a doctor in the New Orleans public health service who hunts a gang of petty criminals carrying pneumonic plague. This time, he himself was upstaged by the villain (Jack Palance, in his screen debut).
More good guys followed in war movies – Halls of Montezuma (1950), The Frogmen (1951) and Destination Gobi (1953) – and westerns Red Skies of Montana (1952), Broken Lance and Garden of Evil (both (1954) in which Widmark turned the steely-eyed, gaunt, albino-like figure of his psychopath characters into a straightforward, blue-eyed, muscular blond. But his white rat persona surfaced from time to time, giggle and all. In Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953), he played a seedy pickpocket who inadvertently “lifts” some top secret microfilm, which he is prepared to sell to the “commies”. Widmark brilliantly presents the moral ambiguity of the man, finally turning against the spies out of revenge, not patriotism.
He was the heavy, challenging Robert Taylor in The Law and Jack Wade (1958), and Mr Ratchett, the millionaire victim in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), so detestable that almost every passenger on the train has a motive to kill him.
On the whole, however, Widmark played mainly hardbitten heroes, especially in a number of westerns, such as John Ford’s leisurely Two Rode Together (1961), in which he partnered James Stewart; Alvarez Kelly (1966), as William Holden’s antagonist; and The Way West (1967), billed third after Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum. “I love westerns,” Widmark commented. “I love the outdoors, I love horses. That’s why I raise them.”
Apart from his film work, he made a fortune investing in land and owned a couple of ranches for himself. He married former actor and screenwriter Jean Hazelwood in 1942, and claimed never to have even flirted with another woman. “After I was married I thought, ‘well, that’s it’. I never thought beyond that. I happen to like my wife a lot.”
Politically, Widmark was a liberal, poles apart from John Wayne, who directed him in The Alamo (1960). Wayne wanted him to play Colonel William Travis, but Widmark insisted on playing Jim Bowie. “You’re not big enough,” Wayne told him. “I’ll be big enough,” Widmark replied. And he was.
The following year, he was the belligerent prosecutor in Judgment at Nuremberg, curiously less sympathetic than Maximilian Schell’s defence attorney. In 1968, he took the title role in Don Siegel’s Madigan as a tough New York detective. Although he is killed at the climax, the character was resurrected for six TV movies in the early 1970s. Widmark played Sergeant Dan Madigan as a cold loner, speaking in metallic tones.
From the 1980s, his light hair turned silver, he made fewer appearances, but whenever he gave an interview, the character of Tommy Udo always came up, even though he had created that monster almost half a century earlier.
Jean died in 1997, but he is survived by his second wife, Susan Blanchard, whom he married in 1999, and his daughter Anne from his first marriage.
· Richard Widmark, actor, born December 26 1914; died March 24 2008
“The Guardian” obituary can also be accessed on-line here.
Movie poster advertises the Italian release of ‘No Way Out,’ directed by Joseph Mankewicz, starring Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark, and Linda Darnell (20th Century Fox), 1950. (Photo by John D Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images)
Coleen Gray was born in Nebraska in 1922. Se made some terrific movies in the 1940’s including “Nightmare Alley”, “Red River”, “Kiss of Death”and “The Killing. She died in 2015.
Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:
The 2001 book Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir contained interviews with six female stars of the genre who were at their peak in the 1940s and 50s. One surprising inclusion was Coleen Gray, who has died aged 92. Surprising because she was seldom cast as a femme fatale in the classic film noirs in which she appeared.
In fact, Gray, with her pretty features, slightly pointed nose and wide eyes, was often the only ethical or innocent element in the dark, doom-laden crime dramas. In Kiss of Death (1947), she is the understanding girlfriend of an ex-con (Victor Mature), helping him to make a new life. In Nightmare Alley (1947), she is the steadfast wife and partner of Stan (Tyrone Power) in a carnival mind-reading act, whose big scene comes when she warns him not to “go against God”.
As the head nurse in the hospital in The Sleeping City (1950), she gains sympathy despite her involvement in illegal drugs and murder, and in Kansas City Confidential (1952), she is a corrupt cop’s law-student daughter, who brings romance into the life of a man (John Payne) unjustly accused of a robbery. Most famously, however, in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), she’s the faithful girlfriend of a criminal (Sterling Hayden), who waited five years for him to be released from prison, and who gets drawn reluctantly into a heist.
Gray was born Doris Jensen in Staplehurst, Nebraska, of strict Lutheran Danish parents, Arthur and Anna, and moved with her family to a farm in Minnesota as a child. Later, she studied drama at Hamline University in Minnesota, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree, before moving to California. While appearing at a theatre in Los Angeles, she was discovered by a talent scout for 20th Century-Fox, who signed her to a seven-year deal at $150 a week in 1944. She then changed her name to Coleen Gray, sometimes billed as Colleen.
Gray’s first screen role, a short but significant one, was in Red River, shot in 1946, but only released by United Artists in 1948 after she had already become known for Kiss of Death and Nightmare Alley at Fox. In the lyrical Howard Hawks western, Gray imbues her one scene, in which John Wayne bids her farewell before heading west, with great force and tenderness. “I want to go with you,” she says. “I’m strong. I can stand anything you can.” “It’s too much for a woman,” he replies. “Too much for a woman? Put your arms around me, Tom. Hold me. Feel me in your arms. Do I feel weak, Tom? I don’t, do I?” Gray is memorably last seen isolated in long shot as the wagon train pulls out.
Gray was almost as effective in leading roles in several lesser westerns, mostly as a good but spunky girl keeping the hero on the right path, among them Mature in Fury at Furnace Creek (1948), Stephen McNally in Apache Drums (1951) and Hayden in Arrow in the Dust (1954). An exception was Tennessee’s Partner (1955) in which she’s a gold digger who tries to trap a cowboy (Ronald Reagan) into marriage for his money.
Among her rare comedies was Riding High (1950), Frank Capra’s remake of his own Broadway Bill (1934) in which she co-starred with Bing Crosby. Although neither matched the stars of the original (Myrna Loy and Warner Baxter), Crosby as a racehorse owner and Gray as the vivacious sister of his snobbish fiancee made a likeable team, and got to share a couple of lively musical numbers.
Parallel to her film career, Gray was a regular on television, particularly as a guest star on western series such as Maverick, Have Gun – Will Travel, Rawhide, The Virginian and Bonanza. Her work on television became more and more dominant through the 60s and 70s after the movies tailed off.
But before her virtual retirement from features, Gray took the title role in The Leech Woman (1960), a more nuanced proto-feminist film than the cheesy title suggests. Gray, as a neglected aging wife of a scientist, goes to darkest Africa where she discovers an elixir of youth, which entails killing men for their hormones. In the process, she gets her revenge on her despicable husband, who loved her only as long as she was young and beautiful. She continues to live off the lives of men in order to retain her beauty, before shrivelling and turning into dust. In transforming herself from a despairing frumpish alcoholic to a predatory young woman, Gray is superb.
Gray’s third husband, the biblical scholar Joseph “Fritz” Zeiser, died in 2012. She is survived by a daughter, Susan, from her first marriage, to the producer/directorRod Amateau, which ended in divorce; and a son, Bruce, from her second, to William Clymer Bidlack, an aviation executive, who died in 1978.
• Coleen Gray (Doris Jensen), actor, born 23 October 1922; died 3 August 2015
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here
