Mala Powers was born in 1931 in Burbank, California. The actress Ida Lupino was supportive of Mala Powers and cast her in some of her directorial work. Mala Powers was Roxanne opposite Jose Ferer in “Cyrano de Bergerac” in 1950. Her other films include “City Beneath the Sea” with Anthony Quinn and film noir “The City That Never Sleeps” with Gig Young. Her last major film was “Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting” with Carol White and Paul Burke. She died in 2007.
“Guardian” by Ronald Bergan:
The long-nosed poet-duellist Cyrano de Bergerac, addressing the object of his love as the proxy of the tongue-tied Christian, declaims: “Your name is like a golden bell hung in my heart; and when I think of you, I tremble, and the bell swings and rings – Roxanne!, Roxanne!”
The name of Mala Powers, who has died of leukaemia aged 75, usually rings a bell as a beautiful, dignified Roxanne in the 1950, Stanley Kramer-produced version of the Edmond Rostand verse drama, for which José Ferrer, in the title role, won the best actor Oscar. “I never loved but one man in my life, and I have lost him twice,” Roxanne says when she realises it was Cyrano’s words that wooed her, at the poignant end of Powers’ most memorable performance.
Yet, despite this achievement, for which she won a Golden Globe nomination, and having studied with Michael Chekhov (nephew of the playwright), of whose acting methods she became a passionate advocate, Powers’ film career was, on the whole, a curiously undistinguished one.
Born in San Francisco, to journalist parents who moved to Hollywood after losing their jobs, she began studying acting at Max Reinhardt’s junior dramatic workshop and, at 11, got a small part as Billy Halop’s kid sister in Tough As They Come (1942), part of Universal’s Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys series. She was advised by Reinhardt’s wife, Helen Thimig, to continue her studies rather than become a child star, and it was not until five years later, by then 16, that she started working in radio, in such programmes as The Cisco Kid, Red Ryder and Screen Guild on the Air.
It was on the last of these that she met Ida Lupino, then casting the lead for her second feature as director. The Outrage (1950) was one of the few Hollywood films to take rape as a subject, although the act could not be shown or the word itself used. But Powers was excellent as the victim of a “criminal assault”, who felt so “dirty” that she ran away to start a new life until a preacher helped her overcome her trauma. In that same year, aged 19, she made Cyrano de Bergerac and appeared touchingly in Mark Robson’s Edge of Doom, a social-conscience film noir, in which she played disturbed youth Farley Granger’s girlfriend.
Sadly, after these successes, Powers suffered a blood disease while on a forces entertainment tour of Korea in 1951, and almost died. She was treated with chloromycetin, but a severe allergic reaction resulted in the loss of much of her bone marrow. She began working again nine months later while still on medication, though it hardly seemed to affect her performances in City Beneath the Sea, opposite Robert Ryan and Anthony Quinn, or as a nightclub dancer in City That Never Sleeps (both 1953).
These were followed by a B-western, The Yellow Mountain (1954), in which she played Nevada Wray, one of the causes of rivalry between gold prospectors Howard Duff and Lex Barker. In 1955, she was again the love interest, this time in the mediocre Randolph Scott western Rage at Dawn, and in Bengazi, as the Irish daughter of Victor McLaglen.
Before leaving the big screen for television – as guest star in such series as Bonanza, Dr Kildare, Bewitched and Charlie’s Angels – Powers starred in a couple of tawdry horror movies, The Unknown Terror (1957) and The Colossus of New York (1958), in which she played the widow of a man whose brain has been transplanted into an eyeless, 12-foot killer robot. She returned to the cinema in Doomsday Machine (shot in 1967; released in 1972), as Major Bronski, a Soviet cosmonaut who sees the Earth burned to a crisp by nuclear explosions.
In contrast, Powers wrote children’s stories, and Michael Chekhov on Theatre and the Art of Acting: The Five-Hour Master Class, as well as teaching acting. From 1970 till his death in 1989, she was married to the publisher Hughes Miller. She is survived by a son from her first marriage.
· Mala (Mary Ellen) Powers, actor, born December 20 1931; died June 11 2007
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Richard Haydn was a British character actor who spent most of his career working in Hollywood usually as prissy fusspots. He was born in Camberwell, London in 1905. His many films include “Forever and a Day” in 1943, “The Late George Apley”, “Cluny Brown” as the boyfriend of Jennifer Jones and son of Una O’Connor, “Five Weeks in a Balloon” and his most wekk known role as Max loyal friend of the Trapp family in “The Sound of Music”. It was good to see him in “Young Frankenstein”. He died in 1985 in Los Angeles.
IMDB entry:
Inimitable London-born character actor, noted for his put-on nasal delivery and pompous, fussy manner. Richard Haydn had a laborious start to his show business career, selling tickets in the box office of London’s Daly Theatre. This was followed by an unsuccessful stint with a comedy act in musical revue. For a change of pace, he became overseer of a Jamaican banana plantation only to see it wiped out by a hurricane. Returning home, he appeared in the 1926 West End production of ‘Betty of Mayfair’ and, soon after, also began to act on radio. It was in this medium, where he first found success, creating his signature character, the perpetually befuddled nasally-voiced fish expert and mother’s boy Edwin Carp. Haydn later immortalised the character in a book, The Journal of Edwin Carp.
The Carp routine opened the door for Haydn to appear with Beatrice Lillie on Broadway in ‘Noel Coward (I)”s ‘Set to Music’ (1939) and this, in turn, resulted in a contract with 20th Century Fox. While his screen debut in Charley’s Aunt (1941) was relatively straight-laced, he was more often seen in comedic roles where his lugubrious face and dignified, sometimes unctuous presence could be employed to scene-stealing effect. His notable characterisations in this vein include the over-enunciating Professor Oddly in Ball of Fire(1941), Rogers the butler in And Then There Were None (1945) and Mr. Wilson in Cluny Brown (1946). He essayed a rare villainous role as the odious Earl of Radcliffe in the period drama Forever Amber (1947) and was back in his best form as Mr.Appleton inSitting Pretty (1948). In The Late George Apley (1947), he played the character of Horatio Willing, ‘with a broad edge of wheezy burlesque’ (Bosley Crowther, New York Times, March 21 1947).
In the late 40’s, Haydn made a brief foray into directing. Of his three films for Paramount, the Bing Crosby vehicle Mr. Music (1950) enjoyed the best critical reviews. Among his later appearances on screen, that of Trapp family friend and promoter Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music (1965), is the one which most often comes to mind. Over the years, Haydn also made an impression as a voice actor in animated cartoons, notably on Warner Brothers Looney Tunes (‘Super-Rabbit’, 1943) and as the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland (1951). He had frequent guest roles on television and starred in one of the best-remembered episodes of Rod Serling‘s Twilight Zone (1959), ‘A Thing About Machines’ (1960), as the pedantic, machine-hating egocentric Bartlett Finchley. He also caricatured a Japanese businessman in an episode of Bewitched (1964).
In private life, Richard Haydn was a rather reclusive individual who liked horticulture, shunned interviews and was never particularly integral to the closely-knit British colony in Hollywood.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Tyrone Power was born in 1914 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He had a terrific film career and starred in such films as “Lloyds of London”, “Marie Antoniette”, “The Mark of Zorro”, “Blood and Sand”, The Black Swan” and “Witness for the Prosecution”. His leading ladies included Simone Simon, Loretta Young, Madeleine Carroll, Maureen O’Hara, Gene Tierney, Rita Hayworth, Linda Darnell, Joan Fontaine, Betty Grable and Ann Blyth. He died of a heart attack in Spain in 1958 while on a location shoot for”Solamon & Sheba” with Gina Lollobrigida. He was 44.
TCM Overview:
Stunningly, darkly handsome romantic lead of the 1930s and 40s whose affability and charm was put to good use in a number of stylish dramas. Power came to the fore at Twentieth Century-Fox (with whom he would stay for almost his entire career) in the costume drama “Lloyds of London” (1936) and he was soon paired with such leading stars as Alice Faye (“In Old Chicago” 1938), Norma Shearer (“Marie Antoinette” 1938, on a rare loan-out to MGM), and Sonja Henie (“Thin Ice” 1937). Power also proved a dashing action lead who intriguingly combined a bit of the fey with masculine bravado in such swashbucklers as “The Mark of Zorro” (1940) and “The Black Swan” (1942). After WWII service Power, his features somewhat more grim and set, gave memorable performances as the phony spiritualist of “Nightmare Alley” (1947), as a man searching for faith in “The Razor’s Edge” (1946) and as the earnest, but ultimately caddish, defendant in “Witness For the Prosecution” (1957). He suffered a heart attack while filming “Solomon and Sheba” (1957) and, upon his death, was replaced by Yul Brynner. Son of American stage actor Tyrone Power, Sr.; husband of actresses Annabella (1939-48) and Linda Christian (1949-55); and father of Tyrone, Jr., Taryn and Romina, all of whom have appeared in films.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
To view Tyrone Power Website, please click here. T
Nightmare Alley, poster, from left, Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, 1947. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Editorial use only. No book cover usage.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Kobal/Shutterstock (5877895a)
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
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“Independent” obituary:VICTOR MATURE was once billed by his studio as “a beautiful hunk of man” and in the Forties he came to personify the latest term signifying male sex-appeal – beefcake.
Victor Mature obituary in “The Independent”.
“‘Actually, I am a golfer. That is my real occupation. I never was an actor, ask anybody, particularly the critics. This is my first Hollywood film in ten years and I only did it because I was getting bored – Victor Mature in 1968. Still, he must have had something to have got regular employment as an actor over a 30 year period. When he started, he was christened ‘the Hunk’ and had a strong shopgirl following. His name became a synonym for beefcake, 40s male sex appeal. He had therefore few fans among men, despite the fact that most of his films were actioners. He was never a sympathetic hero but on occasion made a convincing villain – tough, disdainful, sinister. He was impervious to the situations around him. You never got an inkling of what he was thinking or feeling. But , in the sense that he moved comfortably before a camera and knew what chalk marks to stand on, he was an actor”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”. (1972).
Victor Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1913. He was a very popular leading man in the 1940’s and 50’s and made such classics as “My Darling Clementine” directed by John Ford in 1946, “The Robe”, “Demetrius and the Gladiators” and “Violent Saturday”. His leading ladies included Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Susan Hayward, Jean Simmons and Esther Williams. Victor Mature died in 1999 at the age of 86.
His craggy features, with their full lips and heavily lidded eyes were more controversial – women either loved them or loathed them – and in one of his films, Wabash Avenue, the heroine Betty Grable actually calls him “fishface”. But his physique made him a perfect Samson and hero of biblical epics such as The Robe. He never professed to be a great actor, and stated in 1968, “Actually, I am a golfer. I never was an actor; ask anybody, particularly the critics.”
The son of an Austrian scissors-grinder and a Frenchwoman, Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1913, and was a rebellious youth, thrown out of four schools. At 15 he took his first job, as a candy salesman, and aged 20 decided to try his luck in Hollywood. To gain experience he became a student actor at the Pasadena Playhouse. After appearing in over 60 plays he was given a leading role on stage in Ben Hecht’s To Quito and Back, in which he was seen by the producer Hal Roach, who was looking for an actor with the physique to play a prehistoric man in One Million BC (1940).
Roach first gave him a small role as a gangster in the black comedy The Housekeeper’s Daughter (1939) before starring him with Carole Landis in the caveman saga in which the pair battled gigantic reptiles. After two more films, Mature took a role on Broadway as one of the men in the life of a fashion magazine editor (Gertrude Lawrence) in the hit musical Lady in the Dark (1941). He was described in the show as “the most beautiful hunk of man you ever saw in your life”, and his performance brought him a contract with 20th Century-Fox.
After playing opposite Betty Grable in Bruce Humberstone’s entertaining mystery I Wake Up Screaming (1941), he was loaned to United Artists to portray the Arab lover of a gambling den-owner, Madame Gin Sling, in Joseph von Sternberg’s heavily sanitised version of the stage drama The Shanghai Gesture (1941). He then made four musicals, all released in 1942: Song of the Islands and Footlight Serenade, both with Grable, Seven Days Leave, with Lucille Ball, and My Gal Sal, with Rita Hayworth. (In both this film and Song of the Islands Mature’s singing voice was dubbed.)
In all four films, he played cocky, self-confident heroes, but the actor displayed throughout his career an engaging degree of self-deprecating humour. “Directors and actors who make films with one eye cocked on the Academy Award dismiss me as ham, uncured and uncurable,” he once said, “and scripters find it hard to resist the temptation to take a poke at me by writing cute little scenes in which I am supposed to cavort as a strong boy of sorts. But don’t get me wrong. I picked this racket and I love it.” Later he would delight in telling of his attempt to join a country club that did not permit actors. “I told them, `Hell, I’m no actor and I’ve got 28 pictures and a scrapbook of reviews to prove it.’ “
With America’s entry into the Second World War, Mature served 14 months of active duty prior to being cast in the service revue Tars and Spars. He returned to the screen as the tubercular “Doc” Holliday in John Ford’s great western My Darling Clementine (1946) and received some of the best reviews of his career. The critic Richard Griffith wrote,
Mature is hardly an obvious choice for the role of a tubercular gunman concealing under silken menace his despair at the loss of a Boston medical career. But the performance comes off amazingly. Mr Mature’s face is a basilisk, his eyes look inward; in detail of manner and appearance he successfully suggests the desperate remittance-man.
Henry Hathaway’s Kiss Of Death (1947) starred Mature as a thief who collaborates with the police in order to get out of prison. Time magazine said, “Mature apparently needed nothing all this time but the right kind of role.” Robert Siodmak’s Cry of the City (1948) was another fine thriller in which Mature was a cop who has to hunt down his former childhood friend.
The following year Mature had his best remembered role in Cecil B. DeMille’s spectacular Samson and Delilah (1949). Mature later described his co-star Hedy Lamarr as “not exactly a ball of fire – she just seemed to be loping along”. The film was an enormous hit though critically dismissed, Groucho Marx famously quipping, “I don’t like any movie where the leading man’s chest is bigger than the leading lady’s.” Mature had one major disagreement with his director:
DeMille came up to me and said, “Victor my boy, we’re ready to do the scene where you fight the lion. We have a real lion, but he’s very tame, a sweet old lion. His name is Jackie. When you fight him, I’d like you to put your head in his mouth. Now don’t worry – Jackie has no teeth.” I said, “Mr DeMille, I don’t even want to be gummed!” I did not do the stunt.
Despite the film’s success, subsequent roles for Mature were not distinguished – they included the Grable musical Wabash Avenue (1950), a thriller The Las Vegas Story (1952) with Jane Russell, a dull transcription of Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion (1953) with Jean Simmons, and a romantic comedy with Simmons, Affair With A Stranger (1953). Then he was cast as Demetrius, the slave whose violent nature is tamed by conversion to Christianity, in The Robe (1953), the first film released in CinemaScope. The following year he starred in a sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators, then played two villainous roles, as the soldier who becomes Pharaoh in The Egyptian (1954), and a Second World War traitor in Betrayed (1954).
After the thriller Violent Saturday (1955) he left Fox to freelance. Much of his work after this was done in Europe, but they were mainly mediocre action films, including Safari (1956), Zarack (1957), The Long Haul (1957) and No Time To Die (1958). He returned to the United States to work with the veteran director Frank Borzage on China Doll (1958), a bizarre flop about a man who accidentally buys an Oriental wife, then ominously starred in Escort West (1959) for Francis D. Lyon, who specialised in directing low-budget westerns featuring fading stars.
Italy was proving a viable source of income for former Hollywood names, and Mature starred there in two historical adventures, Annibale (1960), in which he played the title role of the Carthaginian general, and I Tartari (1961), co-starring Orson Welles. After the latter Mature officially “retired” but he reappeared to endearingly parody his old screen image in Vittorio DeSica’s After The Fox (1966), written by Neil Simon and starring Peter Sellers. He continued to do occasional films, including Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972), in which his performance as an ageing Mafioso was described by Esquire as “massive, vigorous, vulgar, authentic, and splendid”.
In the television film Samson and Delilah (1984), he played Samson’s father. Asked how he felt about the role, he replied, “I’d have played Samson’s mother if they’d asked me.” He did not, though, need the money, since he was extremely wealthy, having invested in property, restaurants and electronics, and enjoyed life on his luxury ranch near San Diego. “I loaf very gracefully,” he commented. “There’s a lot to be said for loafing if you know how to do it gracefully.”
Victor John Mature, actor: born Louisville, Kentucky 29 January 1913; five times married (one daughter); died San Diego, California 4 August 1999.
The above “Independent” obituary can now be accessed online here.
William Atherton was born in 1947 in Orange, Connecticut. He has had major roles in such movies as “The Sugarland Express” in 1974 opposite Goldie Hawn, “”The Day of the Locust” and “Looking for Mr Goodbar” with Diane Keaton.
TCM Overview:
A pale, fair-haired, lanky performer, William Atherton first distinguished himself in the theater. After becoming the youngest member of the Long Wharf Theater Company (New Haven, Connecticut) while still a high school student, he went on to off-Broadway where he originated the part of Ronnie Shaughnessy in John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves”, as well as the title roles of David Rabe’s “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel” (both 1971) and David Wiltse’s “Suggs in the City” (1972). That year also saw him make his Broadway debut in the short-lived “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” and his feature debut in “The New Centurions”. Often cast as weaklings or high-strung characters, Atherton attracted attention as the likably charismatic escaped convict husband of Goldie Hawn in Steven Spielberg’s “The Sugarland Express” (1974) and struck the correct balance of ambition and bewilderment as the aspiring art director whose perceptions of Hollywood shape John Schlesinger’s “The Day of the Locust” (1975). He also turned up as a persistent suitor of Diane Keaton in “Looking For Mr. Goodbar” (1977), his last feature for seven years.
During that hiatus, Atherton concentrated primarily on stage work, including a one-man show and Broadway productions of Arthur Miller’s “The American Clock” (1980) and Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” (1983). He roared back to features as Walter Peck, the zealous bureaucrat opposed to the methods of the “Ghostbusters” (1984), arguably the most memorable in a series of high profile supporting roles that included the comically unctuous professor in “Real Genius” (1985) and a zealous newsman in “Die Hard” (1988) and its first sequel “Die Hard 2: Die Harder” (1990). Atherton’s Dr. Noah Faulkner in the box office disaster “Bio-Dome” (1996) was really a variation on the creepy academic from “Real Genius”, and his transparently vacuous local anchor in “Mad City” (1997) was a rehash of his Thornburg character from the “Die Hard” franchise. The 90s also saw him essay a number of historical figures: Allan Pinkerton in HBO’s “Frank and Jesse” (1995), then-state prosecutor Thomas E Dewey in “Hoodlum” (1997) and Hollywood mogul Darryl Zanuck in Martha Coolidge’s “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge” (HBO, 1999).
The above TCM overview can now be accessed online here.
Wesley Addy was born in 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska. He had a profilic career on the stage before beginning his movie career. His films include “The First Legion” in 1951, “My Six Convicts”, “The Garment Jungle” with Gia Scala and Kerwin Mathews and James Ivory’s “The Europeans” in 1979. He was long married to actress Celeste Holm. He died in 1996.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Character actor Wesley Addy began his prolific career as a prime player on the classical stage before coming to occasional films and TV in the early 1950s. Known for his intelligent, white-collar demeanor and lean, icy, cultivated menace, the silver-haired performer, who was actually born in Omaha, Nebraska, was often mistaken as British.
Majoring in economics at the University of California in Los Angeles, Wesley switched gears and trained in summer theater on Martha’s Vineyard before trekking to New York City to pursue a professional career. In 1935, the actor made his Broadway stage debut with Orson Welles in Archibald Macleish‘s “Panic”. He continued with roles as both “Marcellus” and “Fortinbras” in Leslie Howard‘s production of “Hamlet”. Other Shakespearean roles during this early period included “Hotspur” in “Henry IV, Part I”, “Benvolio” in “Romeo and Juliet” and “Orsino” in “Twelfth Night”. He often performed the Bard in the company of such legendary interpreters as Orson Welles, Laurence Olivierand, more frequently, Maurice Evans.
World War II interrupted Addy’s early momentum but he eventually returned to the theatre following his tour of duty and played opposite Katharine Cornell in “Antigone” and “Candida”. A continued presence on Broadway, he had strong stage roles in “The Traitor”, “Another Part of the Forest”, “King Lear” and “The Leading Lady”.
Never acquiring a strong footing in the movies, Wesley changed his on-camera focus in the 1960s to TV and also sought out theatre roles, as well. In 1961, Wesley married actress Celeste Holm. Together, they proved a strong stage coupling in both comedies and dramas — “Invitation to a March”, “A Month in the Country”, “Mame”, “Candida”, “Light Up the Sky”, “Mama” and “With Love and Laughter”.
A reliable, durable performer, Wesley played suave gents and villains on TV. A major portion of his work came from daytime soaps — including The Edge of Night (1956), Days of Our Lives (1965), Ryan’s Hope (1975) and Loving (1983). Later films included Seconds(1966), Network (1976), The Europeans (1979) and The Verdict (1982). He continued to act close to the end. His last film role was as a judge in Before and After (1996) starringMeryl Streep and Liam Neeson, which was released in the year of his death. He was 83.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.ne
James Coco was born in 1930 in New York City. He made his name on Broadway acting in the plays of Terence McNally. His films include “Man of La Mancha” with Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren in 1972, “Such Good Friends”, “The Wild Party” with Raquel Welch and Perry King in 1975. James Coco died in 1987.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Born in New York City of humble means, character player James Coco was the son of Feliche, an Italian shoemaker, and Ida (Detestes) Coco. Shining shoes as a youngster with his father, his interest in acting occurred early on as a child. At age 17 he toured with a children’s theatre troupe for three years portraying Old King Cole and Hans Brinker. Intensive study with acting guru Uta Hagen led to his Broadway debut at age 29 in “Hotel Paradiso” in 1957, but he earned his first acting award, an Obie, for his performance in the 1961 off-Broadway production of “The Moon in Yellow River”. He went on to win a second and third Obie for his performances in the plays “Fragments” (1967) and “The Transfiguration of Benno Blimppie” (1977). Dark, hefty and prematurely balding, he proved to be a natural on the comedy stage and in scores of commercials (notably as Willy the plumber in the Drano ads) throughout the 1960s. Other comedy theater highlights included roles in “Auntie Mame,” “Everybody Loves Opal,” “A Shot in the Dark,” “Bell, Book and Candle” and “You Can’t Take It With You”.
In the late 60s he formed a strong collaboration with playwright Terrence McNally and appeared in an off-Broadway double-bill of his one-act plays (his one-act was entitled “Witness”) in 1968, followed by “Here’s Where I Belong” a failed 1968 Broadway musical variation of the Steinbeck play “East of Eden” that closed on opening night. Their most notable alliance occurred the following year with the play “Next,” which ran more than 700 performances and earned Coco a Drama Desk award. Sixteen years later, and shortly before Coco’s death, the two reunited for the 1985 Manhattan Theatre Club production of “It’s Only a Play”.
Coco also earned kudos for his work in Neil Simon comedies, and “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers” (1969), which was specifically written for him, earned him a Tony Award nomination as Best Actor. The two later joined forces for a Broadway revival of the musical “Little Me” and the hilarious film comedy spoofs Murder by Death (1976) and The Cheap Detective (1978), in addition to his moving support role as Marsha Mason‘s depressed gay actor/friend in Only When I Laugh (1981), which garnered his sole Oscar nomination.
Achieving stardom first on stage, Coco’s other films were a mixed bag with more misses (Ensign Pulver (1964), Man of La Mancha (1972) (as Sancho Panza), The Wild Party(1975), Scavenger Hunt (1979)) than hits (A New Leaf (1971)). On the TV screen, Coco fronted two short-lived 1970s comedy series, Calucci’s Department (1973) and The Dumplings (1976), and also appeared in daytime soaps (“The Edge of Night” and “The Guiding Light”). Throughout his career he played an amusing number of characters on such sitcoms as “Maude” and “Alice” and also played bathos and pathos to great effect, not only winning an Emmy for his dramatic performance on a “St. Elsewhere” episode but appearing opposite Doris Roberts as the brittle Van Daan couple in the TV version of The Diary of Anne Frank (1980). One of his last TV assignments was a recurring role on the sitcom “Who’s The Boss?” in 1986-1987.
In his last years, Coco received attention for his culinary talents and best-selling cookbooks. The James Coco Diet, an educational book which included chapters on menu planning and behavior modification as well as choice recipes), was just one that he promoted on the talk show circuit. It is probably not a coincidence that he often played characters with extreme food issues. Suffering from obesity (5’10”, 250 lbs.) for most his adult life, the talented actor died unexpectedly of a heart attack in New York City in 1987 at the age of 56, and was buried in St. Gertrude’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
William Demerest wasborn in 1892 in St Paul, Minnesota. His fil debut was in 1926 in “When the Wife’s Away”. Among his other film credits are “Rosalie” in 1937, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”, “Josette” with Simone Simon and “”The Jolson Story” in 1946 with Larry Parks and Evelyn Keyes. He was in the very popular television series “My Three Sons” with Fred MacMurray. He died in 1983.
TCM Overview:
Prolific character player of the 1930s and 40s, later on TV, typically in cranky but endearing comedy roles. Appeared in all of Preston Sturges’ Paramount films of the 1940s, most memorably as Officer Kockenlocker in “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” and as the tough Marine sergeant in “Hail the Conquering Hero” (both 1944). Well known as Uncle Charley on the long-running TV series “My Three Sons.”
Jeffrey Lynn was born in 1909. He made his film debut in 1938 and among his films are “Four Daughters”, “The Roaring Twenties” and “The Fighting 69th”. Jeffrey Lynn died in 1995.
Dennis Gifford’s “Independent” obituary:
Jeffrey Lynn was the tall, stalwart hero of many a Warner Brothers movie made during his seven-year contract span, which began in 1938 and was interrupted by war service. He never quite made it as a regular above- the-title star, but his good looks and sincere playing won him a place in the memories of all film fans of Hollywood’s golden age.
He was born Ragnar Lind in 1909, in Auburn, Massachusetts, and took a BA degree from Bates College, Maine. The stage called, however, and he joined a New York stock company, touring in Brother Rat, a farce about three military school cadets and their flirty girlfriends. Curiously the play was bought and filmed by Warners, but without Lynn, despite the fact that they had tried him out in a Vitaphone short film. Instead he was given a small role in Cowboy From Brooklyn (1938), a Dick Powell musical in which the best song of a sorry bunch was Johnny Mercer’s “Ride Tenderfoot Ride”.
Lynn’s manly presence registered well enough for Warners to award him a seven-year contract, and he was lucky to be cast in a strong supporting role in Four Daughters (1938). This excellent small-town soap opera starred Claude Rains as the musical father, the three Lane sisters (Rosemary, Lola and Priscilla) and Gale Page as the daughters, and a brilliant newcomer to films, John Garfield, as the shabby, self-pitying but fascinating drifter who upsets the hitherto happy family.
The film was Warners’ hit of the season, and called for an immediate sequel. With the basic story exhausted (Sister Act, by Fanny Hurst), a new screenplay was contrived around the same cast, excluding Garfield’s character who had “died”. Entitled Daughters Courageous (1939), this sort- of sequel was another big success, with Lynn’s role suitably enlarged. Warners, never the studio to retire quietly, promptly had the original film adapted once again and came up with Four Wives (1939). They followed this with a fourth film, Four Mothers (1940), each time Lynn’s role becoming more central to the story.
Meanwhile Lynn was kept busy fulfilling his contract which in typical Warner style had him play supporting roles in big pictures – The Roaring Twenties (1939), with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart in Mark Hellinger’s terrific gangster story – and top roles in “B” pictures. He was the star of The Body Disappears (1941), in which the eccentric Edward Everett Horton makes Jane Wyman’s body disappear – literally. He invented invisibility!
In 1941 Lynn was voted as one of the Top Ten Stars of Tomorrow, an exhibitors’ poll organised by the Motion Picture Herald. He came in seventh, just two places behind Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile his films grew in stature: he supported Bette Davis and Charles Boyer in All This and Heaven Too (1940) and finally attained top billing as co-star of Underground (1942) with Karen Verne.
This was a war film, and with the United States’ entry into the Second World War, Lynn swiftly volunteered for service in the US Army Corps, where he was made a Special Intelligence Officer. He was discharged with the rank of Captain in 1946. His contract was not renewed by Warners, but he did return to the studio in 1949 to appear in Whiplash, a tough boxing film starring Dane Clark. Although he had plenty of film roles in the post-war years, including the all-star A Letter To Three Wives (1949), written and directed by Joseph J. Mankiewicz at Twentieth Century- Fox, it seemed as if Lynn’s heroic heyday was over, at least as far as cinema went. He returned to the stage and starred in many plays, including Two for the Seasaw and a revival of Dinner at Eight.
The hungry new medium of television beckoned, however, and from 1960 Lynn played the part of a rich newspaper editor in a popular daytime serial, The Secret Storm. This live television soap opera ran for five years. Roles in other series followed, including parts in Barnaby Jones and Murder She Wrote, the Angela Lansbury series which made a point of bringing back former favourites in small supporting parts. His last major work was once again for the stage; he produced The Diary of Anne Frank at the Centre Theatre, Los Angeles, in 1986.
Denis Gifford
Ragnar Lind (Jeffrey Lynn), actor: born Auburn, Massachusetts 16 February 1906; thrice married (one son, one daughter); died Burbank, California 24 November 1995.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
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