Rick Lenz was born in 1939, Springfield, Illinois) is an American actor, author and playwright.
Lenz directed the Jackson, Michigan Civic Theater for two years before relocating to New York to seek work as an actor. In 1965, made his Broadway debut in Mating Dance, starring Van Johnson. Though the show closed opening night, stage impresario David Merrick was in the audience, and soon afterward cast Lenz in the Broadway hit Cactus Flower as understudy for the juvenile lead role, Igor Sullivan. Lenz later took over the role and played it for a year. Film producer Mike Frankovich and Walter Matthau saw him in the part and cast him as Igor in the film version, with Goldie Hawn.
Lenz wrote The Epic of Buster Friend, which was produced off-Broadway in 1973 at the Theatre De Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theatre) in New York City, and was later directed for PBS by Michael Kahn.
In 1981, he co-wrote the pilot of the ABC television series Aloha Paradise, as well writing several of the episodes. Lenz published his memoir North of Hollywood on February 15, 2012.
Rick Lenz
As of 2017, Lenz resides in Los Angeles with his spouse, Linda; the couple married in May 1982. He has three children; sons Scott and Charlie, and daughter, Abigail.
Linda Cristal starred in all 97 episodes of the popular American TV western series The High Chaparral as the fiery Victoria Cannon, Mexican wife of the rancher “Big John”.
In her 2019 memoir, A Life Unexpected, she recalled reading about plans for the programme in a trade magazine, then barging into a meeting of the producers and its creator, David Dortort, to audition for the role. Discarding the script she was given – which she regarded as bland – Cristal improvised in order to portray the character as strong and tempestuous, “a heroine with fire and spunk”, as she described it.
That was enough to win her the role as the aristocratic Mexican rancher’s daughter who marries John (played by Leif Erickson) following the death of his first wife in the opening episode. The mixed marriage was groundbreaking for television in the 1960s, alongside stories of the Cannons’ attempts to live in harmony with Apaches near their ranch in the Arizona desert and bandits from across the Mexican border. The series ran from 1967 to 1971 and won Cristal a Golden Globe award as best TV actress.
Cristal was born Marta Victoria Moya in Buenos Aires, to a French mother, Rosario (nee Peggo), and an Italian father, Antonio Moya Burges, a magazine publisher. When she was five, her father came into conflict with the local mafia, so the family fled to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, where they lived in poverty in a tenement.
Later, following her parents’ deaths, Marta headed for Mexico, where her ambition to act led her to the producer Miguel Alemán. He launched her screen career with the role of a schoolgirl in Cuando Levanta la Niebla (When the Fog Lifts, 1952) and another producer, Raul de Anda, gave her the professional name Linda Cristal.
She appeared in half a dozen Mexican films, then heard that the Hollywood studio United Artists was planning to feature a Latina heroine alongside Dana Andrews in the western Comanche (1956) and successfully auditioned for the part.
The studio signed her to a contract and her roles included the Mexican ranch owner’s daughter who catches the eye of Jock Mahoney’s gunfighter in The Last of the Fast Guns (1958), a Cuban firebrand who marries a New York-based Puerto Rican criminal (John Saxon) in Cry Tough (1959) and the Argentinian pin-up accompanying Tony Curtis on a trip to Paris in the director Blake Edwards’s services comedy The Perfect Furlough (1958), a performance that won her a Golden Globe award as most promising newcomer.
Cristal appeared to get her biggest break when she starred as Cleopatra in the 1959 Italian-French-Spanish co-production Le Legioni di Cleopatra (The Legions of Cleopatra), but 20th Century-Fox bought the film and gave it only a limited release in advance of its own forthcoming 1963 epic Cleopatra, with Elizabeth Taylor.
Consolation came with The Alamo (1960) and the role of a Mexican beauty who has a passing romance with John Wayne. Fulfilling his ambition to play the frontier legend Davy Crockett on screen, the star directed it himself. However, he hired the master of the western genre, John Ford, to direct second-unit sequences. After Cristal met him, he cast her in Two Rode Together (1961) as a Mexican – previously kidnapped by Comanches – whom James Stewart’s Texas marshal rescues from her warrior husband.
She switched to television for one-off appearances in series such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964) before she made such an impact in The High Chaparral.
Then, after playing a Mexican migrant and union leader working for a melon farmer (Charles Bronson) in Mr Majestyk (1974), film parts dried up, but Cristal returned to TV with guest roles in Barnaby Jones (in 1979), The Love Boat and Fantasy Island (both in 1981).
Soap operas also kept her in work. Following parts as a gangster’s lover in El Chofer (1974) in Mexico and a widow with a blind son in Rossé (1985) in Argentina, she played a mobster’s girlfriend in the American daytime serial General Hospital during 1988. Then she retired to run an import-export business and invested in property.
Cristal’s 1950 marriage to the Argentinian actor Tito Gómez was annulled within weeks. Her second marriage, to the industrialist Robert Champion in 1958, ended in divorce the following year. In 1960 she married the actor Yale Wexler and they had two sons, Gregory and Jordan. They divorced in 1966, and her sons survive her.
• Linda Cristal (Marta Victoria Moya) actor, born 23 February 1931; died 27 June 2020
Linda Cristal. Wikipedia.
Linda Cristal was born in 1934 and died in 2020 was an Argentine-American actress. She appeared in a number of Western films during the 1950s, before winning a Golden Globe Award for her performance in the 1958 comedy film The Perfect Furlough.
The daughter of a French father and an Italian mother, Cristal was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Her father was a publisher who moved the family to Montevideo, Uruguay, because of political problems. Her education came at Conservatoria Franklin in Uruguay.
Cristal semi-retired in 1964 to raise her two children. She was coaxed out of retirement when she became the last cast member to be added as a regular on the NBC series The High Chaparral (1967-1971).
Her performance in the series, as Victoria Cannon, earned her two more Golden Globe nominations (winning Best Actress – Television Drama in 1968) and two Emmy Awardnominations.
Cristal worked sparingly after The High Chaparral, with a few television and film roles, such as the film Mr. Majestyk (1974) and the television miniseries Condominium (1980).
She last appeared in the starring role of Victoria “Rossé” Wilson on the Argentine television series Rossé (1985).
Cristal’s 1950 marriage was annulled after five days. On April 24, 1958, in Pomona, California, she married Robert Champion, a businessman. They divorced on December 9, 1959.
In 1960, she married Yale Wexler, a former actor who worked in real estate. They divorced in December 1966.
Fernand Gravey was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1905. He made his first film (a silent) in 1913. He began his career in French and British films and then went to Hollywood in 1937. His most famous movie was “The Great Waltz” with Luise Rainer. He returned to France before the Nazi occupation. His later films included “La Ronde” with Simone Simon in 1950. He died in France in 1970.
One of director Alfred Machin’s favorite actresses was Fernande Dépernay of the Théâtre des Galeries. Dépernay was married to Georges Mertens, another of Machin’s regular actors. Their son, Fernand Mertens, born in 1904. He made his acting debut in ‘Saïda Makes Off with Manneken Pis’ and in 1914 played the role of little Kef in ‘A Tragedy in the Clouds’ alongside his parents. Much later, under the pseudonym Fernand Garvey, he went to become one of France’s most renowned actors.
Peter Cookson was born in 1913 in Oregon. He was most prolific on stage and in film in the 1940’s and 50’s. His films include “Fear” and “G.I. Honeymoon” in 1945. Starred in “Can Can” on Broadway in 1955. His wife was the actress Beatrice Straight. Peter Cookson died in 1990.
In 1967, Katharine Houghton had the lead role opposite Sidney Poitier in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, where she played the daughter of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn (her real life aunt). Surprisingly it did not lead to a major cinema career. Her last film appearance was in “The Last Airbender” in 2010. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1945 and attended Sarah Lawerence College. She has has had an extensive stage career.
IMDB entry:
Katharine Houghton was born on March 10, 1945, in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of Marion Hepburn Grant (Katharine Hepburn‘s younger sister) and Ellsworth Grant. Before going into the movies, she went to Sarah Lawrence College and majored in philosophy. Her debut in the movies was in 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) as “Joanna Drayton”. This movie also starred her aunt, Katharine Hepburn (with whom which she has had a close relationship), Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier. Since this time, she has starred in over fifty on and off Broadway and New England regional theater productions. She is also a playwright and amongst her credits are such productions as: “Best Kept Secret”, “Merlin”, “The Marry Month Of May”, “Mortal Friends”, “On The Shady Side”, “The Right Number”, “Phone Play” and her translation of Anouilh’s “Antigone”. She also presents lectures: “Katharine X Three”, “My Grandmother’s House Near The River” and “The Secret Life of Louisa May Alcott”.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Marcia <Ssspiceey@yahoo.com>
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Celia Kaye was born in 1942 in Jasper County, Missouri. She came to national fame in the U.S. for her part in the television series “The New Loretta Young Show” in 1961. Her movies include “Island of the Blue Dolphins” in 1964, “Wild Seed” with Michael Parks and “Fluffy” with Shirley Jones. She was featured in the iconic “Big Wednesday in 1978 which was directed by her then husband John Milius.”
“Wikipedia” entry:
Celia Kaye (born Celia Kay Burkholder on February 24, 1942) is an American former actress who appeared in a recurring role as Marnie Massey, daughter of the character Christine Massey played by Loretta Young, on the comedy-drama series, The New Loretta Young Show. The program aired for twenty-six weeks on CBS from 1962 to 1963. Most of Kaye’s work was on television between 1962 and 1974, with final credited film appearances ten years apart – in 1978 and 1988.[1]
Of German and Cherokee ancestry, Kaye was born in Carthage, near Joplin, Missouri to chemical engineer John W. Burkholder and his wife, Kathryn, who ran a private pre-school. When she was one year old, her family moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where her brother, Johnny, was born. She is a graduate of the now-defunct Henry C. Conrad High School near Wilmington as well as the Philadelphia Modeling and Charm School.[3] In high school, she was already interested in acting as a member of the National Thespian Society and performed in such school plays as Time Out for Ginger and Brigadoon. She listed her ambition at the time as “to be happy and successful.”
After high school, Kaye moved to California, where she won a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse, from which she graduated in 1961. In 1962, a few months before The New Loretta Young Show premiered, Kaye made her television debut as the character “Julie Trenton” in the segment “The Traveler”, one of the last episodes filmed of the ABCwesternseries Tales of Wells Fargo, starring Dale Robertson. While working on The New Loretta Young Show, she continued her education, attending Los Angeles City College at night and studying modern jazz at Eugene Loring’s American School of Dance.
Kaye considers her association with Loretta Young “a very lucky first experience in show business … She was absolutely amazing. … She was just so warm and so inclusive of everyone that my ‘awestruck’ situation went away immediately….This woman walked in and it was her set. And it was her game, and her show, and it’s like she had it all together and everybody just seemed to fall into place. She was in charge of everything without being harsh about it or bossy.”
When The New Loretta Young Show ended, Kaye appeared twice, once as a character with her own name of “Celia”, in the long-running ABC sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.[1] On December 6, 1964, six months after the premiere of Island of the Blue Dolphins, Kaye was cast as “Ann Shelby” opposite Dwayne Hickman in his title guest-starring role of the episode “The Clay Shelby Story” of ABC’s Wagon Train. Other guest stars in the segment were Richard Carlson and Mort Mills, who were cast as military officers.
In 1965, Kaye played Daphne in the film Wild Seed, opposite Michael Parks. That same year she was “Sally Brighton” in the film Fluffy, starring Shirley Jones. In 1967, she played “Melissa Neal” on ABC’s The Green Hornet in a two-part episode entitled “Corpse of the Year.” That same year, she portrayed a character “Emily” in the episode “Decision at Sundown” of the second Dale Robertson series, The Iron Horse, a fictional account of a railroad moving into the American West. Other television appearances were in 1970 in the ABC series, The Young Lawyers, starring Lee J. Cobb, and in 1973 in Adam’s Rib, starring Ken Howard and Blythe Danner. Kaye’s last television role was in 1974 as Willa Sweeney in “Hundred Mile Walk” of NBC‘s Little House on the Prairie.
Kaye’s last film roles were in the coming of age picture Big Wednesday (1978) opposite Sam Melville, and the horror story, Vampire at Midnight, also known as Murder at Midnight(1988) as “Sandra.”
Kaye has a child, Amanda Milius, from her 1978 marriage to director and screenwriter John Milius, who directed Big Wednesday.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Although Christopher Reeve will forever be remembered for his Superman movies, he did make some other very fine movies. He was born in 1952 in New York City. He made his film debut in “Gray Lady Down” which starred Charleton Heston in 1978. Later on that year, “Superman;The Movie” was released. His other movies of note ionclude the period drama “Somewhere in Time” with Jane Seymour, “The Bostonians” with Vanessa Redgrave and “Remains of the Day” with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Sadly his horseriding accident in 1995 curtailed his career. Afterwards he did make an occasional film. He died in 2004.
Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:
It is a tragic irony that, in his life and death, Christopher Reeve, who has died of heart failure aged 52, has been renowned for two roles: Superman, the supreme physical specimen, and a man paralysed from the neck down. Unfortunately, the second role was all too real.
In 1995 Reeve, a keen rider, broke his neck when he was thrown from his horse during an equestrian competition in Virginia. But, after some years of therapy, despite pessimistic prognoses, he was determined to walk again, and became a symbol of hope for quadriplegics. “I refuse to allow a disability to determine how I live my life. I don’t mean to be reckless, but setting a goal that seems a bit daunting actually is very helpful toward recovery,” Reeve said.
In 2000, Reeve was able to move his index finger and breathe for longer and longer periods without a respirator. He also regained sensation in other parts of his body. Reeve dedicated much of his time and almost all of his energy lobbying US Congress for better insurance protection against catastrophic injury and giving support to stem cell research. Coincidentally, Senator John Kerry, in Friday’s debate with George Bush, said that he believed embryonic stem cell research should be expanded, saying it would be the best way to give Reeve (an active Democrat) and others like him the chance to walk again.
However, it would be a pity if this heroic and heartrending situation should obscure some of his many achievements in his acting career, cut short in such a cruel manner. After all, Reeve appeared in a total of 17 feature films, a dozen TV movies, and about 150 plays.
Christopher Reeve was born in New York into an intellectual family; his father FD Reeve is a noted novelist, poet, and scholar of Russian literature; his mother, the journalist Barbara Johnson. During his childhood, Christopher was exposed to a stimulating intellectual environment that included Sunday dinners with the poets Robert Frost and Robert Penn Warren, and politician and academic Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The atmosphere was such that his father was disappointed to learn that the role of Superman that his son had been offered was not one in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman as he had thought.
Christopher attended the exclusive Princeton Day School, where he started acting in plays. “While I was growing up,” Reeve recalled, “I never once asked myself: ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What am I doing?’ Right from the beginning, the theatre was like home to me. It seemed to be what I did best. I never doubted that I belonged in it.” After graduating from high school, Reeve toured the country as Celeste Holm’s leading man in The Irregular Verb To Love.
While at Cornell University, he majored in music theory and English, and spent time studying theatre in Britain and France. In London, he worked at the Old Vic. “I was a glorified errand boy, but it was a very exciting time there. I helped by teaching the British actors to speak with an American accent. Then I went to Paris to work with the Comedie Francaise.”
In lieu of his final year at Cornell, Reeve was one of two students (Robin Williams was the other) who were accepted at New York’s Juilliard School of Performing Arts. There he studied under the celebrated John Houseman. At the same time, he supported himself with a role in the long-running television soap, Love Of Life. Reeve’s almost unreal handsome looks and athletic, six-foot-four frame made him perfect material for a soap-opera hero, as later for a comic-book one. In the meantime, he won a coveted role of Katharine Hepburn’s grandson in Enid Bagnold’s A Matter Of Gravity on Broadway in 1976, of which Reeve commented: “I had the privilege of spending nine months working with one of the masters of the craft.” In the same year, Reeve got a small part in Gray Lady Down, a submarine adventure film.
While appearing in an off-Broadway production, Reeve successfully screen-tested for the 1978 movie Superman. It was the most inspired casting of an unknown in a series since Sean Connery’s James Bond. Reeve portrayed Superman as “somebody that, you know, you can invite home for dinner … What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely. From an acting point of view, that’s how I approached the part.” Of playing Clark Kent, Reeve reckoned that “there must be some difference stylistically between Clark and Superman. Otherwise you just have a pair of glasses standing in for a character.” Reeve, though he played the two roles straight without any sign of camp, revealed a deft Cary Grant-inspired comic timing.
Unfortunately, the three sequels were a matter of diminishing returns and, after Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987), Reeve, determined to ‘escape the cape’, explained: “Look, I’ve flown, I’ve become evil, loved, stopped and turned the world backward, I’ve faced my peers, I’ve befriended children and small animals and I’ve rescued cats from trees. What else is there left for Superman to do that hasn’t been done?”
Away from the man of steel, Reeve portrayed a wide range of roles. His films included the love fantasy, Somewhere In Time (1980); the thriller Deathtrap (1982); Monsignor (1982), in which he again wore a cape in the title role; and two archetypal Merchant-Ivory period pieces, The Bostonians (1984) and The Remains Of The Day (1993). He also showed his ability at farce in Switching Channels (1988) and Noises Off (1992). Further proof of his versatility came on stage in The Aspern Papers in London with Vanessa Redgrave and Dame Wendy Hiller; Beaumarchais’ The Marriage Of Figaro in New York, and Tennessee Williams’s Summer And Smoke in Los Angeles, as well as touring in Love Letters.
Before the near-fatal accident, Reeve seemed to have everything. He was an accomplished pianist and a superb athlete. He earned his pilot’s licence in his early 20s and twice flew solo across the Atlantic in a small plane. He also flew gliders and was an expert sailor, scuba diver and skier. But horses were his great passion.
In 1998, Reeve returned to acting in a remarkable TV movie update of the Hitchcock thriller Rear Window, in which a man confined to a wheelchair spies on people in a neighbouring apartment.
Reeve is survived by three children, a son and daughter from his long relationship with modelling executive Gae Exton, and a son with Dana Morosini, whom he married in 1992. Reeve’s parents are still alive.
Ë Christopher Reeve, actor, born September 25 1952; died October 10 2004
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Joan Hackett was born in 1934 in New York City of Irish and Italian extraction. She made her television debut in 1959 in “Young Doctor Malone”. She made her film debut in 1966 in “The Group” with other aspiring young actresses including Shirley Knoght, Joanna Pettet, Jessica Walter and Candice Bergen. She won critical acclaim for her lead performance opposite Charlton Heston in the Western, “Will Penny” in 1967. Other cinema highlights were “Support Your Local Sheriff” opposite James Garner and “Only When I Laugh” in 1981. She had a very distinctive voice and was a brilliant young character actress. She died in 1983 at the age of 49.
The Terminal Man
Rebecca
Treasure Of Matecumbe
Assignment to Kill
The Group
The Possessed
The Last of Sheila
The Long Summer of George Adams
Will Penny
Mourning Becomes Electra
Class of 63
How Awful About Allan
Reflections of Murder
Rivals
TCM Biography: Slender, gentle-featured lead and supporting actress of the 1960s and 70s, most typically in nonglamorous roles. After experience as a model and acting training under Lee Strasberg and others, Hackett gained notice off-Broadway with her award-winning work in “Call Me by My Rightful Name” (1961). She became prominent in TV work soon thereafter, copping an Emmy nomination for an episode of “Ben Casey” and playing Robert Reed’s girlfriend on the first season of the popular father-and-son lawyer drama, “The Defenders”. Hackett’s quiet intensity suited her well for a TV adaptation of “Rebecca” (1962) in which she played the mousy second Mrs. DeWinter. By 1964 she was playing leads in two feature-length installments of “The Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre”, “Echo of Evil” and “The Highest Fall of All”.
Hackett moved to feature work soon thereafter with an excellent debut in Sidney Lumet’s ensemble study of female college classmates, “The Group” (1966), in which her wide emotional range as an actress was given full scope. Her subsequent screen work was intermittent but occasionally interesting (e.g. “Will Penny” 1968) but, beginning with the intriguing “The Last of Sheila” (1973), Hackett began alternating supporting roles with leads. TV-movies, often melodramas or thrillers, kept her busy, and included “Lights Out” (1972), “The Possessed” (1977) and “Paper Dolls” (1982). “Pleasure Cove” (1979) and a failed sitcom, “Another Day” (1978), did not properly exploit her potential for comedy, but, in one of her last feature roles, she brought a grim, rueful humor to her Oscar-nominated role as Marsha Mason’s vain, edgy girlfriend in “Only When I Laugh” (1981). Divorced from actor Richard Mulligan, Hackett succumbed to cancer in 1983.
Article on Joan Hackett in “Tina Aumont’s Eyes” website:
A perfectionist capable of playing anything from snooty socialites to nervy housewives, Joan Hackett had an interesting and varied screen career before her untimely death at just 49. A fine, one-of-a-kind dramatic actress, Joan appeared in some award-winning pictures, memorable TV thrillers, and the occasional comedy.
Born in New York on March 1st 1934, Joan began on Broadway before making her movie debut in Sidney Lumet’s engaging soap opera ‘The Group’ (’66). Playing the nervous and insecure Dottie alongside such burgeoning talents; Joanna Pettet, Shirley Knight and Elizabeth Hartman, Joan more than held her own, giving one of the films best performances. Hackett was then impressive in the realistic western ‘Will Penny’ (’68), as a single mother struggling in the frontier, who is ultimately deserted by Charlton Heston’s aging cowboy. Another western followed, this time a comedy; ‘Support Your Local Sheriff!’ (’69), and it was good one. Starring James Garner as an ultra-calm newcomer to a lawless gold-laden town, Joan was great fun as the fiery daughter of the mayor who is battling with greedy bandits who have taken over the place. After playing Anthony Perkin’s fiancé in the 1970 TV thriller ‘How Awful About Allan’, Joan was a widow whose insane, jealous son (Scott Jacoby) doesn’t take too warmly to his mother’s new beau, in the obscure oddity ‘Rivals’ (’72).
The following year, Hackett was the alcoholic wife of Richard Benjamin’s aspiring screenwriter, in one of her best movies, the superb ensemble thriller ‘The Last of Sheila’ (’73), a puzzle of a movie that must be seen more than once to (if ever!) fully understand it. Another television movie came next; ‘Reflections of Murder’ (’74) with Tuesday Weld and Sam Waterston. It was a decent remake of the twisty French horror ‘Les Diaboliques’ (’55), and Joan played her nervous, abused wife character to the hilt, in this atmospheric ‘missing body’ thriller. A Disney movie followed with the rather forgotten adventure ‘Treasure of Matecumbe’ (’76), a buried booty tale co-starring Peter Ustinov and Robert Foxworth.
Hackett would spend the next few years mainly in television, during which time she appeared in the genuinely scary ‘Bobby’ segment of Dan Curtis’s TV anthology ‘Dead of Night’ (’77). In it, she stars as a grieving mother who wishes her dead son back to life, much to her regret. The last few seconds of this segment are terrifying and once seen, never forgotten. After playing Paul Simon’s bored wife in the dreary drama ‘One-Trick Pony’ (’80), Joan was back on form as Marsha Mason’s flawed socialite best friend, in Neil Simon’s ‘Only When I Laugh’ (’81), earning a Golden Globe and Academy Award nomination. Already suffering from cancer, the movie proved to be Hackett’s last great performance, and we are only left to imagine how her career could have soared, had she lived. Her final movie was a small role in the 1982 drama ‘The Escape Artist’, noted for its beautiful score by Georges Delerue.
Married from 1965 to 1973, to her one-time co-star; Richard Mulligan, Joan died of ovarian cancer in California, on October 8th 1983, aged 49. An always interesting actress, with a wide smile and sometimes nervous demeanour, Joan Hackett succeeded on stage, screen and television, bringing to life some memorable and often complex characters. A true one-off who radiated on screen.
Favourite Movie: The Last of Sheila Favourite Performance: Support Your Local Sheriff!
The above article can also be accessed online here.
Born at the tail end of the Second World War in 1944, Bronwyn took her mother’s original maiden name “Fitzsimons” and spent the early years of her life in Los Angeles.
In 1953 her mother divorced her father William Houston Price, the American film director. Reportedly the marriage had been on the rocks for years but O’Hara was mindful of the church’s teachings on divorce.
Bronwyn Fitzsimons
She followed her parents into the tough and glamorous world of Hollywood but found that she was never able to escape from her mother’s shadow. She was cast in films “Spencer’s Mountain” and “The Ravagers”. She also starred in a number of TV roles.
In 1968 she married and two years later she gave birth to a son, Conor, who would also follow her into the film industry.
In her 40s she was involved in a car accident that plagued her with pain for many years to come.
Her mother purchased a home in Glengarriff, Cork in 1970 and as the years wore on the pair began to spend increasingly lengthy amounts of time there. The five bedroom property had 35 acres of grounds attached to it and Bronwyn made a number of friends in the local area – even running a small cafe in the town for a while.
In October 2014 her mother announced she was saying goodbye to Ireland and moving to Idaho where her Conor and his two children had made a life for themselves. It was the beginning of the end for the O’Hara/Fitzsimons clan’s association with West Cork and Maureen passed away the following October.
In May 2016 – barely seven months since her mother’s death – Bronwyn was found dead at the Glengarriff house at the age of 71.
