Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 78 of 125

Teresa Brewer

Teresa Brewer obituary in “The Independent”.

Teresa Brewer was born in 1931 in Toledo, Ohio. She was one of the most popular female vocalists in the U.S. in the 1950’s. Her top ten hits included “Music, Music, Music”, “Nora Malone”, “”A Tear Fell” and “You Send Me”. In 1953 she went to Hollywood to make the musical “Those Redheads from Seattle” with Rhonda Fleming, Guy Mitchell and Agnes Moorhead. She died in 2007.

Spencer Leigh’s “Independent” obituary :

Teresa Brewer was among the biggest-selling stars of the early 1950s and part of the lyric of her 1950 million-seller, “Music! Music! Music!”, “Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon” has passed into common parlance. Despite her huge successes, she only continued her career sporadically, regarding family responsibilities as more important and calling her children “her biggest hits”. This was in sharp contrast to her own childhood when her mother and her aunt had encouraged her to perform, hoping that she would be another Shirley Temple.

The eldest of five children, she was born Theresa Veronica Breuer in 1931 in Toledo, Ohio, where her father worked as an inspector in a glass factory. When only two years old, she was singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” on Uncle August’s Kiddies Show for local radio. Although she had no vocal training, she took tap dancing lessons and became a proficient singer and dancer. Until she was 12, she toured and made radio appearances with Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour, and then concentrated on her studies.

In 1948, she was invited to appear in New York on the TV talent show Stairway to the Stars, and adjusted her name to Teresa Brewer. She remained in New York, staying with her aunt, and then meeting her first husband, Bill Monahan, with whom she had four daughters.

When the British record label Decca established a subsidiary, London, in America, Jack Pleis was instructed to find appropriate talent. The speakers outside one Manhattan club broadcast what was happening on stage and he was intrigued when he heard Brewer’s voice. He gave her a contract with London, but her first record, “A Man Wrote a Song”, did nothing. For her second, he teamed her with some good jazz players, the Dixieland Jazz-Stars, and they made “Copenhagen” as an A-side and “Music! Music! Music!” for the flip.

The disc-jockeys soon pointed out which was better and London Records changed their attention to “Music! Music! Music!”, which topped the US charts for four weeks. Although there were no UK record charts in 1950, “Music! Music! Music!” became the best-selling sheet music and Brewer’s version is easily the best-known of the 10 which were released. Brewer said in later years that her record sounded “painfully slow” and she performed it at tongue-twisting pace in concert.

She followed her success with some novelty nonsense, “Choo’* Gum” and “Molasses Molasses”, before being shunted to another new Decca label, Coral, where she sang “You’ll Never Get Away” with Don Cornell. In 1952, she topped the US charts for a further five weeks with a song based on a Strauss waltz, “Till I Waltz Again With You”. Brewer became a redhead for a role alongside Guy Mitchell in the musical western Those Redheads From Seattle, filmed in 3D, in 1953 and made a TV series with Mel Tormé.

Good songs were hard to come by and so anything decent would be covered by several artists. When the record producer Mitch Miller, heard a song that was being used by Alcoholics Anonymous, called “Let Me Go, Devil”, he commissioned a new lyric, “Let Me Go, Lover”. His production of Joan Weber’s recording topped the US charts, although Brewer’s cover only made the Top 20. In the UK, it was a different story, with four versions making the Top 20 – Dean Martin (number three), Ruby Murray (five), Teresa Brewer (nine) and Joan Weber (16). Brewer lost out in the UK to Joan Regan with “Ricochet” (1953) and “Jilted” (1954) and to Alma Cogan with “Bell Bottom Blues” (1954) and “The Banjo’s Back In Town” (1955). Cogan had a similar effervescence to Brewer on bouncy, up-tempo numbers.

Many white American singers covered songs by black artists, knowing that the original artists would only receive restricted airplay. This practice is reviled with hindsight but it has to be viewed in context, and certainly none of the performers involved, including Johnnie Ray, Pat Boone, Georgia Gibbs and Brewer herself, felt they were doing anything wrong. Brewer’s versions of Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love”, LaVern Baker’s “Tweedle-Dee”, Fats Domino’s “Bo Weevil”, Ivory Joe Hunter’s “A Tear Fell” and Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” all had some commercial success.

With the advent of rock’*’roll, Brewer fell out of favour. “I Love Mickey!” (1956), for the baseball player Mickey Mantle, could only have limited appeal, and with “The Hula Hula Hoop Song” (1958), she was backing the wrong craze, but she had occasional hits like “A Sweet Old-Fashioned Girl” (1956), “Nora Malone” (1957) and “How Do You Know It’s Love” (1960). Furthermore, she had set the stage for the next generation of female singers. Connie Francis emulated the plaintiveness of her ballads, while the similarly petite Brenda Lee captured her vivaciousness. Ed Sullivan would introduce Brewer as “the little girl with the big voice”.

Brewer retired to raise her family, although she still made occasional albums and appeared on television. By the time she was a guest on The Muppet Show (1971), she was already a grandmother. When her first marriage failed, she married the jazz producer Bob Thiele, who made a long string of albums with her – Songs of Bessie Smith (1973), A Sophisticated Lady (1981), Midnight Café (1982) and I Dig Big Band Singers (1983) being among them.

On Memories of Louis (1991), she was accompanied by many of the greatest jazz trumpeters. Her husband had written Louis Armstrong’s hit “What a Wonderful World”, and Brewer made an album of the same name with Stéphane Grappelli and Ruby Braff in 1989. Critics questioned whether her high-pitched, brassy voice would work with such musicians, but her voice had become smoother with age. Quite possibly, though, she was better suited to the down-home charm of Chas and Dave for her album Teresa Brewer In London (1982), also produced by Thiele. Thiele died in 1996 and Brewer never recorded again.

Spencer Leigh

To access her Independent obituary here.

Sybil Jason was born in 1927 in Cape Town, South Africa. She began her acting career as a child perfomer in Britain. She spotted by a Warner talent scout and brought to Hollywood. Her first U.S. film was “Little Big Shot” in 1935. She went on to feature in “Stella Parish”, “The Singing Kid” and “The Great O’Malley” among others. She supported Shirley Temple in “The Little Princess” and “The Blue Bird” in 1940 and then retired from acting.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

From 1935 to 1938, Shirley Temple was the world’s biggest and smallest movie star. During this period, Warner Bros launched their answer to Temple in the cute, dark-haired, wide-eyed, button-nosed Sybil Jason, who has died aged 83. Jason made six feature films and four Technicolor two-reelers for the studio over these years. Unfortunately, most of her films and roles shamelessly resembled those of Temple’s at 20th Century-Fox, and never equalled them in popularity. However, according to Time magazine in 1936: “Among child actresses, Sybil Jason is to Shirley Temple as Jean Harlow is to Ann Harding – less wholesome but more refreshing.”

She was born Sybil Jacobson in Cape Town, South Africa, where her father ran a shoe business. As her mother was in fragile health, the girl was brought up mainly by her older sister Anita, who nurtured her precocious talent, which consisted of playing the piano, dancing, singing and impersonating such stars as Greta Garbo, Maurice Chevalier and Jimmy Durante, all before her fifth birthday.

By then, her uncle, Harry Jacobson, who had settled in Britain, where he was known as “the Crooning Pianist”, playing with British dance-bands such as the Savoy Orpheans and Ray Noble’s Orchestra, as well as being Gracie Fields’s accompanist, invited Anita and Sybil to stay with him and his wife in London. Harry taught Sybil several songs, which she performed for guests, one of whom was the singer Frances Day, who got Jason a spot in a benefit show at the London Palladium.

This led to the child being cast in Barnacle Bill (1935), a minor British drama starring Archie Pitt, Fields’s husband. Jason later recalled that her sister’s advice to her before she went on set for the first time was: “Remember, Sybee, don’t act!” At the same time, Irving Asher, head of the Warner Bros London branch, sent Jason’s screen test to Jack Warner in Hollywood. The studio boss soon replied by telegram, which read merely: “Sign her.”

Jason’s first Hollywood movie was Little Big Shot (1935), a Damon Runyonish tale in which she played an orphan who softens the hearts of two hard-boiled conmen (Robert Armstrong and Edward Everett Horton). Jason was very effective in a couple of dance numbers, and turning on the waterworks when the cons have to give her up to the orphanage. (Audiences’ sugar tolerance was much higher in those days.) The New York Times found her “an engaging infant … although her British accent makes many of her lines unintelligible”. (Jason had somehow managed to avoid acquiring a South African accent.)

One of Jason’s most high-profile performances came in The Singing Kid (1936) as another orphan, though a more cheerful one. She singsYou’re the Cure for What Ails Me with Al Jolson, in his last leading role. In The Great O’Malley (1937), Jason was second billed (after Pat O’Brien, typecast as a moralising Irish cop), portraying the disabled daughter of Humphrey Bogart.

She had further occasions to display her histrionic abilities in two weepies, I Found Stella Parish (1935) and Comet Over Broadway (1938), in both of which she played the daughter of the melodrama queen Kay Francis. Both films also starred Ian Hunter, another Cape Town-born actor.

But after the latter film, Warner Bros decided not to renew her contract. Although Jason was just as musically versatile, enchanting, funny and cloying as the curly-topped, dimpled Temple, it seemed that Hollywood was not big enough to accommodate two multi-talented moppets. Ironically, in Jason’s last two films, she played supporting roles to Temple, as Becky, the little cockney scullery maid at the Victorian girls’ school in The Little Princess (1939), and in The Blue Bird (1940), as a girl who cannot walk, but in the end is cured. Unfortunately, her part was considerably cut in the latter, apparently at the request of Temple’s mother, who was afraid it might overshadow her daughter’s performance. Nevertheless, Jason and Temple remained lifelong friends. As it turned out, The Blue Bird was Temple’s first flop.

Now retired, aged 13, Jason returned to school in South Africa, where she spent several years before heading back to America, where she married Anthony Drake, a writer of radio plays.

When I was a child growing up in South Africa, and beginning to take an interest in movies, I was delighted to be told that I was related, albeit distantly, to Jason. Her memoir, My 15 Minutes: An Autobiography of a Child Star of the Golden Era of Hollywood, was published in 2005, a year before her husband died. She is survived by a daughter.

• Sybil Jason (Sybil Jacobson), actor, born 23 November 1927; died 23 August 2011

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed here.

Robert Morse was born in 1931 in Newton, Massachusetts. He is a celebrated stage performer who has also acted in film. His movies include “The Cardinal” in 1963 with Tom Tryon and Romy Schneider, “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”, “Quick Before It Melts” with George Maharis and “Where Were You When the Lights Went Out” with Doris Day in 1968.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

With that impish, gap-toothed grin, nervous bundle of energy, Robert Morse could never be contained long enough to become a film star. The live stage would be his calling. He made his debut with the musical, “On the Town”, in 1949, and trained with Lee Strasberg, before making his inauspicious film debut in The Proud and Profane (1956), but movie offers were few. Instead, he brightened up the lights of Broadway as “Barnaby Tucker” in “The Matchmaker” (and in the film version of The Matchmaker (1958)), in “Say, Darling” (Tony nomination in 1958), “Take Me Along” (Tony nomination in 1959) and his best-known role as the ever-ambitious “J. Pierpont Finch” in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”, in which he finally won the Tony, in 1961, while singing his signature song, “I Believe in You”, to himself in the mirror. He took that role to film, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), six years later.

His best movie roles also came in the 60s, as a Britisher arranging his uncle’s funeral in the cult favorite, The Loved One (1965), and as Walter Matthau‘s philandering buddy/advisor in A Guide for the Married Man (1967). His offbeat musical talents were used for the intriguing experimental James Thurber-like TV series, That’s Life (1968), with E.J. Peaker, which combined sketches, monologues and musical interludes, but the show lasted only one season. Overall, Bobby’s work has never been less than interesting with no gray areas in his performances — ranging from bizarre to irritating, from frenzied to fascinating. After earning acclaim and another Tony-nomination as the cross-dressing musician on the lam in “Sugar”, a Broadway musical version of Some Like It Hot (1959), Morse appeared less and less — his eccentricities proving both difficult to cast and to deal with. Following an unfulfilling stint on the daytime soap, All My Children (1970), he came back in grand style in the one-man tour de farce, American Playhouse: Tru (1992), based on the life of the equally-eccentric Truman Capote – a perfect fit, if ever there was one, between actor and role. With this role, Bobby became one of the choice few to ever win Tony awards for both a musical and dramatic part. He continues to be seen in odd roles from time to time, such as “Grandpa” in the revamped TV movie, Here Come the Munsters (1995). Married twice, his daughters are actresses Andrea Doven, Hilary Morseand Robin Morse.

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

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Daily Telegraph obituary in 2022:

He won a Tony for the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and starred in the sex comedy A Guide for the Married Man

ByTelegraph Obituaries21 April 2022 • 5:48pm

Morse as Bertram Cooper, founding partner of Sterling Cooper, in Mad Men CREDIT: Ron Jaffe/AMC

Robert Morse, the actor, who has died aged 90, made his name in the 1960s in the hit stage and film musical How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; although he subsequently endured more vicissitudes in his career than his talent merited, he enjoyed a late-life triumph as the eccentric veteran adman Bert Cooper in the television series Mad Men.

Gap-toothed and puckish, Morse brought an ingenuous quality to the roles he played that made even characters who bordered on the morally dubious seem sympathetic. He was perfectly cast in Frank Loesser’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying – his first leading role on Broadway – as J Pierrepont Finch, a window cleaner who works his way up by various cunning contrivances to become chairman of the World Wide Wicket Company.

The show opened at the 46th Street Theatre in October 1961 and ran for more than 1,400 performances. Morse was not a natural dancer but his abundant energy and the skills of the choreographer Bob Fosse saw him through, and he won one of the seven Tony Awards with which the production was showered.

He repeated his performance for the 1967 film, one of many exuberant, gently satirical screen comedies in which he appeared during this period: among the others were Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) with Doris Day; the bawdy farce Honeymoon Hotel (1964); and The Boatniks (1970), in which he was top-billed as a bumbling coastguard in pursuit of Phil Silvers’s jewel thief.

In 1965 he essayed an English accent when he led a cast that included Sir John Gielgud, Rod Steiger and Liberace in Tony Richardson’s The Loved One, adapted from Evelyn Waugh’s blackly comic novel about the American funeral industry.

“When they’d finished shooting it Tony decided that he couldn’t understand a single word I was saying. As I was playing the lead this seemed to create a problem,” Morse recalled. “So they sent me all the way from California to London, and for two weeks Corin Redgrave gave me a crash course in the pronunciation of the English language. Then I dubbed the film again, and everyone seemed happy.”

He was particularly proud of A Guide for the Married Man (1967), which he regarded as “the first adult American sex comedy”. Directed by his boyhood hero Gene Kelly, it saw Morse as a suburban Casanova – playing the part “as a sort of randy Top Cat”, observed The Sunday Telegraph’s Robert Robinson – advising his neighbour Walter Matthau on how to get away with committing adultery, and featured almost every comedian working in Hollywood in cameo roles. Robinson judged that the film’s cheerful cynicism would “amuse all but the tender-hearted”.

Nevertheless, films such as The Graduate were ushering in a more wry and world-weary approach to satirical comedy, to which Morse’s boyish charm was judged ill-suited.

As his film career petered out he continued to work on Broadway – in 1973 he received another Tony nomination when he wore drag in Sugar, a musical version of Some Like it Hot – but he lost his nerve in 1976 when he appeared in an almighty flop, So Long, 174th Street, which closed after 16 performances and bankrupted the Harkness Theatre. “It was the end of the theatre. It was the end of me,” he recalled.

Robert Morse (with book of the same title) in a scene from the film How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, 1967 — Robert Morse (holding book of the same title) in a scene from the film How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, 1967 CREDIT: United Artists/Getty Images

He began to take drugs and drink to excess while “trying to make a career in tacky television movies”. Reflecting on his early career in 1989, he observed: “I never got a chance to be in a play or picture where I played a father, or had a family, or where I could feel or show something. The wild child in me never had a chance to grow up.” Casting directors did not know what to do with an “ageing leprechaun”, he complained.

In 1989 he finally returned to Broadway and enjoyed a great critical success in Tru, a one-man play about Truman Capote; he drew on his own battles with substance abuse to give an endearing portrayal of the bitchy, troubled author, and won a second Tony Award. In 1992 he won an Emmy when the play was televised.

Although he worked busily on stage thereafter, he looked destined to remain largely forgotten by the wider public, until in 2005 he was cast in Mad Men, Matthew Weiner’s homage to the 1960s heyday of Madison Avenue. Weiner, whose conception for the series drew heavily on the breezy amorality of How To Succeed… and A Guide for the Married Man, plucked Morse from relative obscurity to play Bertram Cooper, senior partner at the ad agency Sterling Cooper.

Morse with Elaine Joyce in an episode of the TV comedy series Love, American Style called Love and the Forever Tree, 1974 CREDIT: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

Morse – who would receive five Emmy nominations during his eight-year run on the series – had a ball as the avuncular but steely Cooper, whose enthusiasms include Ayn Rand and Japanese culture (he prefers not to wear shoes in the office) and whose aversions, uniquely among the characters in the series, include smoking. Arriving on the immaculately recreated 1960s set on his first day of filming, Morse found himself transported back to his glory days and serenaded the cast and crew with numbers from How to Succeed…

Cooper was killed off in the penultimate season, dying quietly while watching the Apollo 11 Moon landing. At the end of his final episode the 83-year-old Morse enjoyed a spectacular finale, performing an energetic song-and-dance version of The Best Things in Life Are Free as Cooper appeared to the character Don Draper in a valedictory vision – a moment that proved to be a moving homage to the origins of Morse’s career.

Robert Alan Morse was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on May 18 1931, the son of Charles Morse, who owned a chain of cinemas in New England, and his wife May (née Silver), a concert pianist. A cinema obsessive who would borrow his father’s trenchcoat to ape Alan Ladd, he decided, after two years in the US Navy, to move to New York and study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where his brother Richard was already a student.

The leading actors of Mad Men: Bert Cooper (Robert Morse), Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks), Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Roger Sterling (John Slattery) — The leading characters in Mad Men: Bert Cooper (Robert Morse), Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks), Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Roger Sterling (John Slattery) CREDIT: Television Stills

Tyrone Guthrie picked him out of an audition crowd to play Barnaby in the first Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker (Royale Theatre, 1955) and although he was so nervous on the opening night that he soiled himself, he did well enough to be cast in the 1958 film version.

Morse’s resemblance to the impresario Hal Prince saw him cast as a Prince-esque character in the theatre satire Say, Darling on Broadway in 1958; he received a Tony nomination, as he did the following year for his supporting role in Take Me Along, a musical adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness. It was his success in the latter production, in which he first worked with Bob Fosse, that saw him cast in How to Succeed…

After leaving Mad Men, Morse played the journalist Dominick Dunne in the miniseries The People v OJ Simpson (2016), and the same year returned to Broadway after a quarter of a century’s absence to appear in The Front Page alongside Nathan Lane, John Goodman and his former Mad Men co-star John Slattery.

Robert Morse is survived by his wife Elizabeth, whom he married in 1989, and their son and daughter, as well as three daughters from his first marriage, to Carol D’Andrea.

Robert Morse, born May 18 1931, died April 20 2022

The Andrew Sisters were hughlypopular as a singing trio during the 1940’s both in the U.S. and overseas. They made some movies including “Argentine Nights” in 1940, “Buck Privates” and “Hollywood Canteen” in 1945.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

The defining sister act of all time with well over 75 million records sold by which the swinging big-band era could not be better represented were the fabulous Andrews Sisters: Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne. With their precise harmonies and perfectly syncopated dance moves, the girls reached heights of worldwide fame still unattained by any group which followed. They delivered an optimistic, upbeat war campaign that instilled hope, joy and allegiance through song, comedy, and lively movement. They provided a musical security blanket to a war-torn country via records, films, radio, clubs, stages, canteens, and overseas war zones emphasized the motto that America was strong and proud…and to keep on singing and swinging! Second only to perhaps Bob Hope in commitment and extensive USO touring, the girls’ profound influence extends even today with such current pop idols as Bette Midler, The Pointer Sisters, Barry Manilow, The Manhattan Transfer, The Star Sisters, and Christina Aguilera all having reinvented themselves in Andrews Sisters’ style at one time or another. Unfortunately, while the adhesive harmonies of The Andrews Sisters were intricately close, their personal harmonies were more discordant.

Hailing from Minnesota, eldest sister LaVerne was born on July 6, 1911, followed by Maxene on January 3, 1916, and finally Patty on February 16, 1918. Greek father Peter was a restaurateur in the Minneapolis area; their mother Ollie was a Norwegian homemaker. Childhood was mostly lost to them. The trio’s musical talents were quickly identified and they started performing on the road as youngsters, entering assorted kiddie contests and often winning for their efforts. The girls grew up on the vaudeville circuit, roughing it and toughing it with various bands and orchestras. Signed by orchestra leader Leon Belasco in 1937, the girls made their very first recordings with “There’s a Lull in My Life” (an early solo by Patty), “Jammin'” and “Wake Up and Live.” Subsequent radio work eventually led to the Decca Records label. Although LaVerne read music and was in fact an accomplished pianist, they learned by sense memory, pure instinct and a strong ear. Blonde Patty was the lively melodic leader, engulfed by the warm harmonies of auburn-haired contralto LaVerne and brunette soprano Maxene.

The old Yiddish song “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon” was translated into English for them bySammy Cahn and the girls walked off with their first huge hit in late 1937 (they were paid a flat fifty dollars and no royalties!). An overnight sensation upon release (it sold more than a million copies), their contract was immediately revised by Decca and throughout the rest of the decade, they recorded smash after smash — “The Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out the Barrel!),” “Well, All Right,” “Hold Tight, Hold Tight” (with Jimmy Dorsey ), “Oh, Johnny! Oh, Johnny! Oh!,” and their first two duets with Bing Crosby in 1939: “Ciribiribin” and “Yodelin’ Jive” (both featuring jazz violinist Joe Venuti and his orchestra).

The country was absolutely captivated. Universal responded in like by signing them to some of their nonsensical “B” musicals derived purely for escapism as the U.S. prepared itself and became embroiled in WW2. Their first appearance co-starred the zany and sometimes corny antics of The Ritz Brothers in an unflattering ditty called Argentine Nights (1940). The frizzy-bobbed trio were introduced as a sort of specialty act with the songs “Hit the Road,” “Oh, He Loves Me” and “Rhumboogie.” This was followed by a 1-2-3 punch back at the recording studio with their renditions of the rollicking “Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar,” a reinvention of the WW1 waltz “I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time” and the soft, sentimental ballad “Mean to Me.” Their second film was the above-average Bud Abbott – Lou Costello vehicle Buck Privates (1941), which solidly showcased the tunes “You’re a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith,” “Bounce Me Brother with a Solid Four,” “I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time,” and their infectious signature jump hit “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” The girls vocalized perfectly and stepped in swinging time for two other Bud Abbott – Lou Costello comedies, In the Navy (1941) and Hold That Ghost (1941).

Box-office sellouts on stage and in personal appearances across the nation, they were given their own radio show in late-1944, which continued through 1946, featuring such weekly guest stars as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Eddie Cantor, Bud Abbottand Lou Costello, Carmen Miranda, Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, Rudy Vallee, and many other prominent celebrities. In late-1947, CBS Radio signed the sisters as regulars on “Club Fifteen” (they appeared three times a week for five years with alternating hostsBob Crosby and crooner Dick Haymes. In 1942, Universal now decided it was the right time to spruce them up and give them a bit more on-screen persona by featuring them front-and-center in what turned out to be an unfortunate string of poorly-produced “quickies.” In Give Out, Sisters (1942), they posed as rich society matron types out to better their careers while featuring their big hit “Pennsylvania Polka.” In Private Buckaroo(1942), they put on a show for servicemen singing, among others, the huge hit “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me”. The plots may have been pancake-thin but they were sure-fire morale boosters and needed war-time tension relievers. No trained actresses by any margin, the girls emanated a down-home naturalness and appeal with a comedic flair that attracted audiences coast-to-coast.

In later films they played everything from “lonely hearts” club managers in Always a Bridesmaid (1943), to elevator operators in How’s About It (1943), to war-time factory workers in Swingtime Johnny (1944)_. Universal’s Follow the Boys (1944) and Paramount’s Hollywood Canteen (1944) were popular all-star productions for the war effort which featured the sisters prominently. With a never-say-die flair, they finished up their Universal contract rather inauspiciously with Her Lucky Night (1945), just as WW2 had come to an end.

In the post-war years, they appeared in Paramount’s _Road to Rio (1948)_ with Crosby, Hope and Lamour, which was the highest-grossing film of that year. Still highly in demand in the recording studio, on radio, on stage and in clubs, they had no trouble managing. In the meantime Disney utilized the girls’ voices in their cartoon featuresMake Mine Music (1946) and Melody Time (1948). All three girls experienced down times in their personal lives as well during the late-1940s. There were rumblings amid the group. Maxene and Patty went through painful divorces — Maxene split with the group’s manager Lou Levy; Patty lost agent and husband, Martin Melcher to singer Doris Day, their parents passed away within a year of each other, as did their mentor Jack Kapp of Decca Records. Moreover, the girls squabbled over their parents’ estate shares and individual career desires. In 1953, Patty, the group’s lead, declared she was going solo. LaVerne and Maxene attempted to duo for a time until Maxene attempted suicide, of a drug overdose in 1954, heartbroken over the nasty breakup of the group, although LaVerne denied the suicide attempt to reporters.

The girls reunited in 1956 and worked constantly for the next decade in recording studios (Capitol and Dot), on stages throughout the world (frequently in England), and in countless guest-star television spots. LaVerne’s serious illness in 1966, however, promptly ended the trio permanently. She died of cancer in May of the next year. Maxene retired shortly after and became dean of women at a Tahoe, Nevada college. Patty, ever the trouper, continued on television, in clubs and in film cameos…wherever there was an audience.

In 1973, Patty and Maxene reunited for their first Broadway musical, the nostalgic “Over Here” (Tony-winning Janie Sell played the LaVerne counterpart)in which they performed their old standards following the show’s second act; but it did little to repair the Patty/Maxene off-stage relationship, especially since LaVerne wasn’t around to foster peace-making tactics, and since Maxene blamed Patty’s husband, Walter Weschler, as an instigator in separating her from Patty. The estrangement would last two decades until Maxene’s death in 1995.

The two sisters did reunite briefly when they earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987. The group was also inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998. Patty sang in shows and on cruise ships while Maxene continued soloing and did quite well for a time in such musical shows as “Pippin” and “Swing Time Canteen” (the latter as late as 1995). Plagued by heart problems (she suffered a massive heart attack in 1982), she died of a second coronary on October 21, 1995. Patty remained in seclusion in her Northridge home near Los Angeles with husband Wally for years. After his death in 2001, Patty began a steady decline and died on January 30, 2013, just two weeks before her 95th birthday. Fortunately, The Andrews Sisters’ perhaps exaggerated but now legendary feuding can never overshadow their exhaustive musical contributions and unparalleled success during 36 years of performing together.

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

Tony Randall was born in 1920 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was a stalwart second lead on film in the 1950’s and then in the 1970’s became very popular on televusuon as Oscar in the series “The Odd Couple”. His films included “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” with Jayne Mansfield in 1957, “Pillow Talk” with Rock Hudson and Doris Day and “The Mating Game” with Debbie Reynolds. He died in 2004.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

Last year’s release of Down With Love was a homage to the three romantic comedies featuring the Hollywood team of Rock Hudson, Doris Day and Tony Randall – this time with Ewan McGregor, Renee Zellweger and David Hyde Pierce. But just in case the nostalgic point was lost, Randall, who has died aged 84, had a cameo role as an agitated publisher.

It was a reminder of the days when the actor was the personification of suburban America’s comic neurosis, as portrayed in glossy features and as the fusspot Felix Ungar in the US television series, The Odd Couple (1970-1975), for which he won an Emmy.

Although the Broadway and film versions of The Odd Couple became established hits with different stars (notwithstanding the fact that Randall played Felix in a Chicago production), he drew on his passion for opera by making the character an opera lover. He also added the loud honking noises that accompanied Felix’s constant sinus attacks.

Randall’s portrayal of nebbishness reached its peak in his support of Hudson and Day in Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964). In the former, he was the jealous, rejected suitor of Day, trying to protect her from his womanising friend Hudson; in the second, he was Hudson’s indecisive boss; and in the last, believing that his best friend Hudson was going to die, he started drinking to deal with the impending “tragedy”. Randall was able to whine better than most actors, though he could be trenchant as well.

Born Leonard Rosenberg in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of an art dealer, he was educated at Northwestern University, Chicago, and Columbia University, New York, before studying for the stage at the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York. Billed as Anthony Randall, he appeared in a few plays before going off to serve in the US army signal corps, from 1942 to 1946.

He made his Broadway debut in 1947 as the brave Roman soldier Scarus in Anthony And Cleopatra, with Godfrey Tearle and Kathleen Cornell in the title roles. In July 1954, he took over from Gig Young in Edward Chodorov’s Oh, Men! Oh, Women!, which led to his being offered a part in the 1957 CinemaScope screen version, the only survivor from the Broadway production. As one of psychiatrist David Niven’s more eccentric patients, Randall almost stole the picture – and certainly established his phobic persona.

Randall was already well-known for two very different roles: to US television audiences, he was Harvey Weskit, the brash best friend of timid Robinson Peepers (Wally Cox) in the live sitcom Mr Peepers (1952-1955); and theatregoers were familiar with his portrayal of the cynical newspaperman EK Hornbeck in Inherit The Wind (1955), observing the Scopes monkey trial on the teaching of evolution theory.

However, his real international breakthrough came in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), the film version of George Axelrod’s Broadway comedy hit. Randall was wonderfully perplexed as the timorous advertising man given the task of convincing Jayne Mansfield to contribute her lips to a campaign for Stay-Put lipstick – only to find himself being hailed as a sex symbol.

An unlikely heart-throb, Randall again got the girl in The Mating Game (1959), based on HE Bates’s The Darling Buds Of May, when he played an upright taxman falling for an unconventional farmer’s daughter, Debbie Reynolds. In Let’s Make Love (1960), he demonstrated once again his ability to steal scenes with his dry wit, a task made easier by Yves Montand’s discomfort in the role of the billionaire who gets involved with showgirl Marilyn Monroe.

Randall was delightfully roguish as the King in The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (1960), and played seven roles in The Seven Faces of Dr Lao (1963), a triumph for him and the makeup specialist William Tuttle, who won an Oscar. However, he was less convincing in two films made in England, as Hercule Poirot in The Alphabet Murders (1965), and as an American tourist caught up with spies in Our Man In Marrakesh (1966).

Around this time, Randall, who was an outspoken liberal, started to express his doubts about the Vietnam war. As a result, he was dropped as a regular panellist on Opera Quiz, the intermission feature of the weekly Texaco Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. He said he donated the remainder of his contract fee to Senator Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign.

After The Odd Couple ended, Randall had his own television sitcom, The Tony Randall Show (1976-78), playing a twinkly-eyed, widower judge deliberating as much over his troubled family as over his court cases. Another sitcom, Love, Sidney (1981-83), was derived from a 1980 TV movie Sidney Shorr: A Girl’s Best Friend.

In the 1980s, the acerbic Randall was frequently seen on talk shows expressing his disgust at the death penalty, his scepticism of the Emmys, his refusal to work with smokers, and the need for subsidised theatre in the US.

In 1992, he realised a long-cherished dream by founding his own non-profit-making company, The National Actors’ Theater, maintained, in part, at his expense in New York and devoted to classics. However, the critical response to its productions – many with Randall in leading roles – was mixed. For the first years, each season ambitiously offered three plays, but gradually this was reduced to one.

Among the productions were The Crucible, with Martin Sheen as John Proctor; The Master Builder; The Seagull; Timon Of Athens; The Odd Couple reteaming of Jack Klugman and Randall in Three Men On A Horse and The Sunshine Boys; and an ailing George C Scott in Inherit The Wind.

In 1995, the 75-year-old Randall, whose wife Florence had died three years previously, married Heather Harlan, an ingénue at the National Actors Theater, 50 years his junior. Both she and his two children survive him.

· Tony Randall (Leonard Rosenberg), actor, born February 26 1920; died May 17 2004

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

Patti Page was born in 1927 in Oklahoma. She was avery popular U.S. recoriding star in the 1950’s. Her songs included “Tennessee Waltz” in 1950 and “Old Cape Cod”. She co-starred in the 1962 movie “Boy’s Night Out” with Kim Novak and James Garner. She died in 2013.

Dave Laing’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

With record sales estimated at more than 100m, which included more than a dozen million-selling singles, Patti Page, who has died aged 85, was one of America’s favourite popular singers of the 1950s. She was dubbed “the Singing Rage”, and her alto voice was often double tracked, on hits such as Mockin’ Bird Hill, (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window and, her signature song, Tennessee Waltz.

Page’s first big hit was With My Eyes Wide Open, I’m Dreaming, in 1950. In the same year, she recorded Tennessee Waltz. This had already been a great success in versions by its composer, the country singer Pee Wee King, and others, but Page’s recording, again with overdubs of her vocals, outsold them all. This inaugurated the period of her greatest popularity. More country songs were given the Page touch, such as Mockin’ Bird Hill and Detour, both bestsellers in 1951, while the 1952 tearjerker I Went to Your Wedding was memorably parodied by the comedy bandleader Spike Jones.

The 1953 novelty (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window, was Page’s only British hit, and faced strong competition from several other recordings, including one by Carole Carr, with children’s chorus and Rustler the dog, and a version by Lita Roza that reached No 1.

Page also specialised in songs about American places and landscapes, notably Allegheny Moon, which reached No 2 in the charts in 1956, and Old Cape Cod, a No 3 hit the following year. Her final top 10 hit of the decade was Left Right Out of Your Heart in 1958. Among Page’s albums were Folk Song Favorites (1951) and Manhattan Tower (1956), a version of a Gordon Jenkins narrative tone poem produced by her musical director Vic Schoen.

By the end of the 50s, the arrival of rock’n’roll had dented the popularity of Page and her contemporaries. She would have only one more big hit single, the film theme Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, in 1965. However, she continued to record and perform occasionally until the 1990s, finding a new audience among country music fans. She received several honours from the music industry and was due to be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys ceremony in February 2013.

She was born Clara Ann Fowler in rural Oklahoma, the 10th of 11 children of a railway worker and a farm labourer. While still at school, she started work in the art department of a Tulsa radio station. Her vocal skills soon led to her promotion to become the voice of the Patti Page Show, a daily 15-minute programme sponsored by the local Page Milk Company.

The broadcasts attracted the attention of Jack Rael, the manager of a Texas orchestra, the Jimmy Joy band. She joined the band in 1946, taking with her the name Patti Page. With Rael as her personal manager, Page left the band a year later to essay a solo career, beginning with a broadcast at a Chicago radio station, where she was accompanied by a small group led by Benny Goodman.

Almost immediately, Page was signed by Mercury Records, a recently founded Chicago record company, as their “girl singer”. Her early recordings were supervised by Mitch Miller, a former orchestral oboist. Her first disc, Confess, featured the then novel multitrack technology, enabling Page to provide her own backing vocals.

Page hosted television shows in the 50s, and was a frequent guest on the programmes of Ed Sullivan, Steve Martin and others. She also appeared in the 1960 film Elmer Gantry.

She was married three times, first to Jack Skiba, then to the choreographer Charles O’Curran and thirdly to a maple-syrup magnate, Jerry Filiciotti. Her first two marriages ended in divorce and Filiciotti died in 2009. She is survived by a son, Danny, and a daughter, Kathleen.

• Patti Page (Clara Ann Fowler), singer, born 8 November 1927; died 1 January 2013

• This article was amended on 6 January 2013. The film Elmer Gantry was not a musical.

“The Guardian” obituary on Patti Page can also be accessed here.

Monte Markham was born in 1935 in Florida. His films include “Hour of the Gun” in 1967, “Guns of the Magnificent Seven”, “Midway” and “Airport 77”.

IMDB entry:

Monte Markham was born on June 21, 1935 in Manatee, Florida, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Baywatch (1989), The Second Hundred Years (1967) and Ginger in the Morning (1974). He has been married to Klaire Keevil Hester since June 1, 1961. They have two children. Received his MFA from the University of Georgia in 1960 and was an instructor at Stephens College, Missouri, from 1960-1962 before he pursued a full-time acting career.

His brother Jess was a pilot for Air America, the CIA airline in southeast Asia.

One Sheet; Movie Poster; Film Poster; Cinema Poster;

Juanita Hall was born in 1901 in Keypost, New Jersey. Rodgers & Hammerstein selected her to play ‘Bloody Mary’ in the stage musical “South Pacific” in 1959. Nine years later she recreated her part on film with Mitzi Gaynor, Rosanno Brazzi, John Kerr and France Nuyen. She wnet on to star in “Flower Drum Song” with Nancy Kwan and Miyoshi Umeki. She died in 1968.

IMDB entry:

A leading black Broadway performer in her heyday, she was personally chosen by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein to perform the roles she played in South Pacific and Flower Drum Song. In the early 30s, she was a special soloist and assistant director for the Hall Johnson Choir.

Inspired as a child by blues legend Bessie Smith, she only recorded one album of blues in her lifetime.

Married a young actor, Clement Hall, while in her teens. He died in the 1920s. They had no children and she never remarried.

Trained classically at Juilliard.

Although a light-skinned Afro-American, her two most famous roles saw her cast as a Pacific Islander (“South Pacific”) and an Asian-American (“Flower Drum Song”), respectively. She reprised her roles in both productions in the movie versions. Received a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical in the Broadway stage version of “South Pacific”. She sings in the cast album, but was dubbed in the film version by the actress from the London production.

The role of Bloody Mary is based on the only true-life person whom James A. Michener met in Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, in the South Pacific. She was Tonkinese. Tonkin, at the time, was in China, and after the French left Vietnam, that area became part of North Vietnam. She arrived in the South Pacific to work on a French plantation owner’s farm. Received a 1950 Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical in the Broadway stage version of “South Pacific”. She sings in the cast album, but was dubbed in the film version by the actress from the London production.

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Al Martino was one of the great American popular singers of the past sixty years. He was born in 1927 in Philadelphia. He has had numerous Top Ten hists including “”Here In My Heart”, “The Story of Tina”, “Spanish Eyes” and “Mary in the Morning”. He was featured in “The Godfather” in 1971 and “The Godfather 3. Al Martino died in 2009.

Michael Freedland’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

A million young girls believed Al Martino, who has died aged 82, had a place reserved for them when he sang the hit ballad Here in My Heart. He warbled I Love You Because and they had no doubt that he was making a personal statement for their ears only. Such was the power of an early 1950s pop star in a more innocent age when words and melody seemed to mean something.

Martino entered the Guinness Book of Records by having, in 1952, the first No 1 record in the newly launched UK singles chart. Here in My Heart remained at No 1 for nine weeks. He also had 34 “Hot 100” entries in the American hit parade between 1959 and 1977. I Love You Because and I Love You More and More Each Day were both in the Top 10. Hits were very much Martino’s business, most of them revealing the fact that he was in love with a mysterious girl.

There was a time when it seemed that Martino was destined to be the new Frank Sinatra, not least because he first enjoyed success at precisely the time that Sinatra’s career was at a low ebb. The Sinatra connection continued when, in 1972, Martino appeared in the Oscar-winning film The Godfather as Johnny Fontane, a nightclub singer and aspiring actor whose lagging career is given a helping hand by the mob. Fontane’s godfather, Don Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando), arranges for a horse’s head to be placed in the bed of a Hollywood mogul to ensure a movie role for his godson. Martino can be seen performing I Have But One Heart (O Marenariello) in the film’s opening wedding scene.

For years it was widely believed that Fontane was based on Sinatra, who, it was alleged, got his own big movie break in From Here to Eternity (1953) thanks to mafia intervention. However, research has disclosed that it was not Sinatra who brought in the mafia, but Martino’s near namesake, Dean Martin, another Italian-American singer enjoying his first hit records. Their voices were at times remarkably similar, except that Martino’s style was more full-throated than the laidback “Dino” approach. When Martino sang Spanish Eyes in 1965, another of his successful singles, he might easily have been mistaken for Martin, who was even at one time wrongly said to be Martino’s brother.

He was born Alfred Cini in Philadelphia. When he left school, he entered the family’s construction business, and in the evenings sang in clubs and bars near his home – a fairly conventional way for singers to get noticed. Like Sinatra, Martino won a contest – in his case, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scout Show.

Mario Lanza, the operatic tenor who became a pop idol, was a friend of the family and persuaded the young Al to take up singing professionally. Martino recorded Here in My Heart for the BBS label, and it was distributed internationally by Capitol, with huge success.

His version of the Italian ballad Volare was big not only in the US, but in Italy too – a coals-to-Newcastle triumph of amazing proportions. The song reached the top of the charts across Europe in 1975.

In the glory days of the vinyl LP, Martino had a string of albums that sold extraordinarily well. In Britain, he was billed as “America’s answer to Val Doonican”, a compliment if ever there was one.

He is survived by his wife, Judi, son Alfred and daughter Allison.

• Alfred Cini (Al Martino), singer, born 7 October 1927; died 13 October 2009

• This article was amended on 15 October 2009. The original stated that Martino was born Alfred Cini Martino, that he recorded Here in My Heart for the Capitol record label, that his version of Volare was released in 1956, and that Bert Kaempfert wrote Spanish Eyes for him. This has been corrected.

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

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Teresa Brewer

Teresa Brewer obituary in “The Independent”.

Sybil Jason

Robert Morse

Daily Telegraph obituary in 2022:

The Andrew Sisters

Tony Randall

Patti Page

Monte Markham

Juanita Hall

Al Martino

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