Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 84 of 125

Martha Hyer

Martha Hyer obituary in “The Guardian” in 2014.

Martha Hyer was born in 1924 in Fort Worth, Texas. She made her debut in “The Locket” in 1946. She spent years in minor roles and then in the late 1950’s she stunned audiences with her strong performances in such films as “Some Came Running” in 1957 with Frank Sinatra, “Ice Palace” with Richard Burton and Carolyn Jones and “The Carpetbaggers” with Alan Ladd and Carroll Baker in 1964. Her final fim was “Crossplot” in 1969. Her husband was the producer Hal Wallis. She died in Santa Fe in May 2014.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:

There was a time in the 1950s and 60s when film buffs would have known what was meant by a “Martha Hyer role”. It evoked a classy, beautiful but cold woman, usually the one the hero aspires to, but realises, by the end, would not be good for him. This was typified by Hyer’s portrayal of the frosty schoolteacher in Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (1958), for whom a would-be writer (Frank Sinatra) hopelessly falls. “Your hands on me aren’t the least persuasive,” she tells him, unpersuasively. Later, in the film’s most subtle sequence, she is seduced, sobbing in silhouette while Sinatra picks the pins out of her hair. Hyer, who has died aged 89, deservedly earned a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for her performance.

Hyer was born in Fort Worth, Texas, one of three daughters of Agnes (nee Barnhart) and Julien Hyer. Her father was a judge who later took part in the trials at Nuremberg after the second world war. She studied speech and drama at Northwestern University in Illinois, before going to the Pasadena Playhouse in California. After being rejected by both Paramount and 20th Century Fox, she was finally given a contract with RKO in 1946.

After a few bit parts, she played pretty and bland female leads in several routine westerns. After her RKO contract ended, she starred in the low-budget fantasy thriller Oriental Evil (1951), as an American woman in Tokyo looking for the dastardly opium runner responsible for the death of her brother. The producer was Ray Stahl. Hyer and Stahl soon married and spent a year in Japan where Stahl co-produced and co-directed Geisha Girl (1952), in which Hyer played a detective disguised as a flight attendant on the track of Japanese gangsters.

Although she was seen in many cheesecake poses in film fan magazines, her screen career failed to catch fire, mainly because of her association with the schlock produced by her husband. In 1953, after finishing her scenes for the lame colonial adventure The Scarlet Spear in Kenya, Hyer left Stahl in Africa and, realising that she would always come second to his mother in his affections, divorced him.

From the mid-50s, aside from playing straight woman to Abbott and Costello and Francis the Talking Mule, Hyer started to establish her snooty screen persona in better parts in better movies: in 1954 the heiress engaged to a playboy (William Holden) in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina, the antithesis of Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn), who steals Holden’s heart; and, in Lucky Me, an oilman’s snobbish daughter standing in the way of Doris Day and Robert Cummings. In a similar vein, Hyer was the socialite who employs a hobo (David Niven) as her butler in the remake of My Man Godfrey (1957) and attempts to prevent a widower (Cary Grant) from falling in love with his children’s nanny (Sophia Loren) in Houseboat (1958).

In the following years, the elegant Hyer was seen in a number of soapy sagas such as The Best of Everything (1959), Ice Palace (1960) and The Carpetbaggers (1964), hardly ever loosening her hairpins. She was the epitome of Alfred Hitchcock’s “cool blonde” who just lost out to Janet Leigh for the role of Marion Crane in Psycho (1960). If only she had got the part, she might have avoided Bikini Beach (1964), Pyro (1964), in which she is a jealous mistress who starts a fire that kills her lover’s wife, and Picture Mommy Dead (1966), in which she is a wicked stepmother. She had a chance to play a goodie in First Men in the Moon (1964), loosely based on HG Wells, in which Hyer and two male companions soar to the moon from Victorian England in a spherical capsule propelled by an anti-gravity element cooked up in the professor’s country lab.

In 1966, after being linked romantically to a number of handsome stars, including George Nader, who happened to be also seeing Rock Hudson at the time, Hyer married Hal Wallis, one of the biggest Hollywood producers. After the marriage, she cut down on acting, preferring to travel with Wallis and leading a ritzy social life. In fact, to finance her extravagant lifestyle, unbeknown to her husband she got into debt with loan sharks. But, in the early 1980s, Hyer was finally forced to confess. Wallis called in the FBI and the problems were solved with lawyers at great expense.

At the same time, Hyer found God among the glitz, a revelation she detailed in Finding My Way: A Hollywood Memoir (1990).

Wallis died in 1986.

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

“MailOnline” obituary:

Martha Hyer, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a schoolteacher in1958’s Some Came Running, has died at the age of 89.

A star of Hollywood’s Golden Age: Martha Hyer, Oscar nominee and Sabrina actress (pictured in 1956) has died at the age of 89

Hyer passed away at her home in Santa Fe, where she has lived since the mid 1980s, a representative from Rivera Funeral Home confirmed to the New Mexican newspaper, adding that no funeral service or memorial had been planned.Despite her Oscar nomination, the blonde beauty was most famous for her role as the stunning society fiancee of playboy David Larrabee (William Holden) in Audrey Hepburn’s 1954 romance Sabrina. The actress – who was born in Texas in 1924 – never capitalised on her Oscar nod, after losing out to Wendy Hiller for her role in Separate Tables.

A number of unsuccessful movies followed, Bikini Beach, House of 1,000 Dolls and Picture Mommy Dead , ‘all ones I’d rather forget,’ she wrote in her 1990 autobiography Finding My Way: A Hollywood Memoir.

However, during her career she worked with many of the Hollywood greats including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Humphrey Bogart and Rock Hudson.

She also turned down the young Senator John F. Kennedy when he once asked her out.

She married The Scarlet Spear director C. Ray Stahl in 1951 but the marriage ended in divorce three years later.

Martha then tied the knot with her The Sons of Katie Elderdirector Hal B. Wallis in 1966 and was with him until his death in 1986.

However, the spendthrift actress did complain in her memoir about his tightfistedness with money.

Her own spending got her in trouble and she admitted in her memoir that in the 1980s she owed millions to loan sharks.

The New Mexican reports that Wallis called in the FBI to help her clear her financial problems.

Hyer – who found God in the 1980s – moved to Santa Fe following her husband’s death in 1986 where she lived a quiet life painting and hiking with friends.

Speaking about her desire to remove herself from the spotlight, she said: ‘When you live with fame as a day-to-day reality, the allure of privacy and anonymity is as strong as the desire for fame for those who never had it.’

The “MailOnline” obituary can also be accessed online here.

IMDB Entry:

Martha Hyer was born on August 10, 1924 in Fort Worth, Texas. Once she finished her formal schooling, Martha played a bit role in 1946’s The Locket (1946). Slowly, Martha began picking up roles with more and more substance. The best years for the beautiful actress began in 1954 when she played in films such as Down Three Dark Streets (1954),Showdown at Abilene (1956) and Battle Hymn (1957). Perhaps the best role of her long career was as “Gwen French” in 1958’s Some Came Running (1958) in which she starred opposite Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. As a result of her stellar role, Martha received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, but she lost out to Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables (1958). Afterwards, Martha’s stint on the US silver screen’s trailed off some. She did make a handful of foreign films, returning to appear in the US from time to time, but nothing compared to the pace she had in the fifties. Her last film was in 1973 in the film The Day of the Wolves (1971). In 1966, she married producer Hal B. Wallis and remained with him until his death in 1986.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny JacksonThis placid blonde was once in the running for the role of Marion Crane in Hitchcock’sPsycho (1960), but lost out to Janet Leigh.Was once labeled “Universal’s answer to Grace Kelly“.Her classmates at Northwestern University included Cloris Leachman, Paul Lynde,Charlotte Rae, Charlton Heston, Patricia Neal and Agnes Nixon.In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by Rosetta Calavetta. At the beginning of her career she was occasionally dubbed by Miranda Bonansea and Giuliana Maroni. Towards the late fifties, Renata Marini and Anna Miserocchi also lent their voice to Hyer.Was discovered by an RKO talent agent while acting with the Pasadena Playhouse.Majored in drama and speech at Northwestern University.She is a staunch Republican and conservative.Member of Pi Beta Phi SororitThe above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Peter Van Eyck. TCM Overview.

Peter Van Eyck was born in Germany in 1911. In 1931 he left Germany and came eventually to New York where he worked for Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater. He was in Hollywood by 1943 where he made such films as “The Moon is Down”, “Five Graves to Cairo” and “Action in the North Atlantic”. Among his later films was “The Snorkel” with Betta St John and Many Miller in 1959. He died in Switzerland in 1969.

TCM Overview:
Peter van Eyck, born Götz von Eick (16 July 1911, Steinwehr, Pomerania, Germany (now Kamienny Jaz, Poland) – 15 July 1969, Männedorf bei Zürich, Switzerland), was a German-American actor. After graduating from high school he studied music. In 1931 he left Germany, living in Paris, London, Tunis, Algiers and Cuba, before settling in New York. He earned a living playing the piano in a bar, and wrote and composed for revues and cabarets. He then worked for Irving Berlin as a stage manager and production assistant, and for Orson Welles Mercury Theatre company as an assistant director. Van Eyck went to Hollywood where he found radio work with the help of Billy Wilder, who later gave him small film roles. In 1943 he took US citizenship and was drafted into the army.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

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He gained international recognition with a lead role in the 1953 film The Wages of Fear. He went to appear in episodes of several US TV series including The Adventures of Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In English-language films he was most often typecast as a Nazi or other unsympathetic German type, while in Germany he was a popular leading man in a wider range of films, including several appearances in the Dr. Mabuse thriller series of the 1960s. Van Eyck was married to the American actress Ruth Ford in the 1940s. With his second wife, Inge von Voris, he had two daughters, Kristina, also an actor, and Claudia.

Mercedes McCambridge obituary in “The Guardian” in 2004.

Mercedes McCambridge was a powerhouse of an actress who only made a few films but made an enormous impact. She was born in 1916 in Illinois to an Irish American Catholic family. She won an Oscar for her first performance in “All the King’s Men” in 1949. Other films include “Giant” in 1956, “Johnny Guitar” striking sparks off Joan Crawford and “Suddenly Last Summer”. She voiced the devil in the persona of Linda Blair in “The Exorcist”. She suffered unbelievable sorrow when her only child, her son Stephen killed his two daughters, his wife and himself in 1987. Mercedes McCambridge died in 2004.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

Hollywood has had its fair share of actors turned into lesbian icons – think of Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford or Greta Garbo – but none had a dykier screen persona than Mercedes McCambridge, who has died aged 87.

She played up this image in her cameo performance in Orson Welles’s Touch Of Evil (1958), as the duck-tailed, leather-jacketed leader of a band of Mexican bikers, wanting to watch Janet Leigh being raped in the motel room. This was a follow-up to perhaps her most famous role, that of the butch bitch who leads a posse against Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray’s baroque western, Johnny Guitar (1954).

The question posed by several critics about the latter role was whether McCambridge, as Emma Small, who owns “every head of cattle for 500 miles”, wanted to kill Crawford’s saloon-owning character Vienna, or sleep with her. Whatever the answer, McCambridge’s lynch-happy harpy was one of the most striking portrayals of a forceful woman in cinema.

Almost two decades later, she provided one of the eeriest sounds in films by voicing the demon inside Linda Blair, in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973). According to Welles, who co-starred with her in the Ford Theater series, it was, in fact, McCambridge’s versatile voice that made her “the world’s greatest living radio actress.”

Born in Joliet, Illinois, she had begun performing on radio while still at Loyola Catholic College, in Chicago, and went on to make a name for herself in the I Love A Mystery radio series, from 1939 to 1949. After a shortlived marriage to William Fifield, among the people she worked with was Canadian actor-writer-director Fletcher Markle, whom she married in 1950. The couple went to Hollywood in 1949, he to direct a few minor films, she to make her screen debut in Robert Rossen’s All The King’s Men, for which she promptly won an Oscar as best supporting actress.

In this movie, McCambridge is superb as Sadie Burke, the hard-boiled henchwoman and lover of populist southern demagogue Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford). Few actors could have taken, or convincingly merited, such a slap across the face as she receives from investigative journalist John Ireland.

It was Ireland again, as a mentally disturbed man on the run from an asylum, who almost murdered McCambridge, playing a tough, singing waitress called Cash And Carry Connie, in The Scarf (1951). She, in turn, was a murderer in King Vidor’s Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), killing Richard Todd’s wife out of jealousy.

Five years later, she was Oscar-nominated as best supporting actress for her performance in George Stevens’s Texas saga, Giant (1956). Here, she expressed an almost incestuous jealousy as Luz Benedict, Rock Hudson’s unmarried older sister, passionately at odds with Elizabeth Taylor, her brother’s wife. Her character is killed when she is thrown from the horse Warwinds, which she symbolically cannot master, in scenes enacted in masterful wide images and close-ups.

Following that, McCambridge made the most of her short screen time as Taylor’s avaricious mother prepared to permit her daughter, who “went off her rocker in Europe”, to have a lobotomy in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s film of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer (1959). Her line in boot-faced characters continued in Angel Baby (1961), as the shrewish wife of evangelist promoter George Hamilton.

It was about this time that McCambridge, recently divorced from Markle, with a young son to bring up, started to drink heavily. A devout Catholic, she claimed to have lost her faith. Along struggle against alcoholism ensued until she gave up drink in 1969, becoming a leading member of the US National Council on Alcoholism, while regaining her Catholic faith. (Her experiences were noted down in an autobiography, The Quality Of Mercy, in 1981.)

But none of this stopped her appearing as the sadistic, lesbian supervisor of a women’s prison on a Caribbean island in the exploitative 99 Women (1969), or happily lending her voice to the demon in The Exorcist. According to Friedkin: “When I started making The Exorcist, I had no idea how we were going to do the demon voice. I knew I wanted a voice that was neutral – neither male nor female – but with both male and female characteristics. In the end, the name Mercedes McCambridge came into my head. I spoke to her on the phone, and, to my joy, she sounded exactly as she had sounded 30 years earlier on the radio.

“She worked for, maybe, three weeks doing the demon voice. She was chain-smoking, swallowing raw eggs, getting me to tie her to a chair – all these painful things just to produce the sound of that demon in torment. And as she did it, the most curious things would happen in her throat. Double and triple sounds would emerge at once, wheezing sounds, very much akin to what you can imagine a person inhabited by various demons would sound like. It was pure inspiration.”

Unfortunately, when The Exorcist was released, Warner Brothers failed to credit her, so McCambridge sued the studio. On later prints, her credit reads, not “the voice of the demon”, as she would have preferred, but simply “and Mercedes McCambridge”.

Meanwhile, McCambridge was more active in the theatre: in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf on tour, and in the military courtroom drama, The Love Suicide Of Schofield Barracks, on Broadway in 1972, for which she was nominated for a Tony award. She also guest-starred in a number of television western series, among them Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

In 1987, a tragedy hit her family. Her son, John Markle, a high-flying economist, became involved in a financial scandal, and subsequently shot his wife and two daughters, and then himself. McCambridge soldiered on, continuing to perform on stage and winning plaudits in Los Angeles for her role in Neil Simon’s Lost In Yonkers (1992), as the grandmother who rules the household with a rod of iron.

Even then, she had lost little of what made her one of the most memorable of supporting actors.

· Charlotte Mercedes Agnes McCambridge, actor, born March 16 1916; died March 2 2004 The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Carlos Rivas was born in 1928 in Texas. His best known role was as Lun Tha in “The King and I” in 1956. He was also featured in “Comanche”, “The Deerslayer”, “The Miracle”. He died in 2003 at the age of 74

“Wikipedia” entry:

Carlos Rivas was an American actor, best remembered as Lun Tha inThe King and I (1956), Dirty Bob in True Grit (1969), and Hernandez in Topaz (1969). Rivas was born in El Paso, Texas, to a German father and Mexican mother. English was his first language. Carlos Rivas was discovered in a bar in Mexico. He began his career in Mexican and Argentinian westerns, though his Argentinian films were actually filmed in Mexico.

His American debut was in The King and I, (1956) opposite Rita Moreno. After this career highlight, he was quickly reduced to supporting roles.^[2] Rivas had co – starring roles in two science fiction films, The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956), and The Black Scorpion (1957). Rivas played Chingachgook in The Deerslayer (1957), with Lex Barker, Forrest Tucker, and Rita Moreno. In 1969, Rivas co-founded, with Ricardo Montalban and Henry Darrow, Nostroso, a Los Angeles based organization devoted to improving the way Hispanics are depicted in entertainmsent.

A poster for George Cukor’s 1933 drama ‘Little Women’ starring Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Jean Parker, and Frances Dee. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

Douglass Montgomery was born in 1907 in Los Angeles. He began his career in Hollywood films of the 1930’s notably “Little Women” opposite Katherine Hepburn in 1933. In the 1940’s he went to the United Kingdom where he made many fine films especially “The Way to the Stars” in 1945. He died on the 23rd of July 1966 on the same day as another great Hollywood actor called Montgomery died – Montgomery Clift.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Montgomery, on stage by his teens, was scouted by MGM. The studio changed his name to Kent Douglass and cast him in dashing or romantic roles opposite some of MGM’s powerhouse actresses, such as Joan Crawford (in Paid (1930) ) and Katharine Hepburn (inLittle Women (1933), in which he played the role of Laurie).

Just as he was gaining ground, MGM inexplicably changed his name again, to Douglass Montgomery, and lent him to other studios. Although he forged ahead with Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), Harmony Lane (1935) (in which he portrayed composer Stephen “Suwanee River” Foster), and Bob Hope’s comedy classic The Cat and the Canary (1939), his career was in decline by WWII. He enlisted with the Canadian infantry and served for four years. Montgomery returned to acting but was scarcely noticed. He starred in a few routine British films, then returned to the US for a few more and for some work in television. He died in 1966.

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

TCM overview:

jessgalchutt ( 2006-12-05 )

Source: www.imdb.com

A strapping young man with chiseled, handsome looks and a naive, innocent demeanor, this actor’s career might just have been hampered by a change of screen names. Actor Douglass Montgomery was born Robert Douglass Montgomery in 1907. On stage in his teens, MGM scouts nabbed him, signed him up, and changed his name to Kent Douglass for films in 1930. With a suitably dashing and romantic presence similar to that of Leslie Howard, the fair-haired young man played second leads opposite some of MGM’s powerhouse ladies, including Joan Crawford in Paid (1930) and Katharine Hepburn in Little Women (1933) in which he played the role of Laurie. Just as he was making grounds, his moniker was inexplicably changed to Douglass Montgomery, and he was loaned out to other studios. Although he forged ahead with Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), Harmony Lane (1935) , in which he portrayed composer Stephen “Suwanee River” Foster, and Bob Hope’s comedy classic The Cat and the Canary (1939), by WWII, his career had waned. He enlisted with the Canadian infantry, serving for four years. Montgomery returned but was scarcely noticed. He starred in a few routine British films following this period, then returned to the US for a couple more and some TV work. He died in 1966.

The above TCM overview can be accessed online here.

Peggy O’Neil was born in New York in 1894 and died in London in 1960. Her film career was based mainly in the U.S. and her stage career in Britain.

1736128 Ma soeur est du tonnerre My Sister Eileen de Richard Quine avec Janet Leigh Jack Lemmon et Betty Garrett 1955; (add.info.: Ma soeur est du tonnerre My Sister Eileen de Richard Quine avec Janet Leigh Jack Lemmon et Betty Garrett 1955).

Jack Lemmon was born in 1925 in Newton, Massachusetts. He has had one of the popular and prolific career that any Hollywood actor could wish for. He began by playing callow young men opposite such powerhouse ladies as Betty Grable and Judy Holliday. By the late 1950’s he had developed into a sterling comedic actor starring in such movies as “Some Like It Hot” with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis in 1959 and “The Apartment” with Shirley MacLaine in 1960. He won two Oscars, for “Mr Roberts” in 1955 and “Save the Tiger” in 1973. He starred opposite some of the most iconic leading ladies of the 60’s and 70’s including Doris Day, Romy Schneider, Anne Bancroft and Jane Fonda. He died in 2001. His widow is the actress Felicia Farr.

Duncan Campbell’s obituary of Jack Lemmon in “The Guardian”:

The world of entertainment and millions of fans were yesterday mourning and paying tribute to Jack Lemmon, who died in a Los Angeles hospital following complications related to cancer. The star of Some Like It Hot, The Odd Couple and Missing, and the winner of two Oscars, was 76.

His wife, Felicia, his two children and his step-daughter were at his bedside when he died. He had been in and out of the University of Southern California/ Norris Cancer Clinic in Boyle Heights during the last few months as his condition deteriorated. He underwent surgery a month ago to remove an inflamed gall bladder. Although he died on Wednesday night, news of his death was not made public until early yesterday.

“He is one of the greatest actors in the history of the business,” said his publicist and longtime spokesman, Warren Cowen. “To say one word about him would be ‘beautiful.’ It’s an opinion that is shared by everybody who knew him.”

His death comes almost exactly a year after his old friend and partner in The Odd Couple, Walter Mathau, died of a heart attack. “Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon,” is how the director Billy Wilder once described him.

“What marks all the best work Lemmon has done are some trace elements of the man himself, some perceived truth that as clown or tragic figure, the persona within the character is likable, decent, intelligent, vulnerable, worth knowing; disorganised possibly, flawed almost certainly, but forever worth knowing,” was the assessment of the Los Angeles Times film writer, Charles Champlin.

In 1999, he performed in the television drama Tuesdays With Morrie, for which he won an Emmy and in which he had an opportunity through his role to reflect on death. He was already ill with cancer.

Enormous range

While he may be best remembered for his roles as the musician who had to dress in drag to escape the mob in Some Like It Hot, and as Felix Unger in The Odd Couple, Lemmon’s range was enormous. Whether playing the distraught father of a son missing during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile in the film Missing, or an alcoholic in The Days of Wine and Roses, or a speedy newspaper man in The Front Page, he managed to bring something different to the role.

Although regarded as one of the great comic actors in the history of film, five of his seven Oscar nominations were for roles in dramas rather than comedies.

Born in 1925 in a lift in a hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, legend had it that he had a case of jaundice which prompted a nurse to remark: “My, look at the little yellow Lemmon.” John Uhler Lemmon III was the son of the owner of a bakery who suffered from childhood illnesses and required 13 operations before he was 13.

After studying at Harvard and serving in the US navy as an ensign in the second world war, Lemmon embarked on an acting career first in the theatre in New York, then on radio, television and film, that spanned half a century. He even managed to resist pressure from the legendary studio boss, Harry Cohn, who wanted him to change his name lest critics and audiences should ever be tempted to describe the movies he appeared in as “lemons”. He won an academy award for the first time in 1956 for his part as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts, and again in 1973 for playing a compromised businessman in trouble with the mob in Save the Tiger.

Recently, he had been reflecting on his career. Explaining his roles in Missing, The Days of Wine and Roses and The China Syndrome, in which he played a nuclear power plant operator, he said: “I like a film that has a point of view.” He said that it was not necessary for him to agree with a point of view in order to play the part, but that films that made people think always attracted him. But he was philosophical about the movie business: “We all make bad films _ you misjudge. That happens more often than the hits. But I have been able to get films that have worked, not only at the box office, but critically and with the public, often enough so that I’m still around. I can still get wonderful parts, thank God… I am passionate about acting, I love it, respect it. It gets me.” He kept acting and getting parts until near the end.

While Lemmon said he had loved his career and felt privileged to have played so many different parts, he said that his career was always much less important to him than his family. He was married from 1950 to 1956 to the actress Cynthia Stone, and their son, Chris, was born in1954. In 1962, he married the actress Felicia Farr, and their daughter, Courtney, was born in 1966. His family said yesterday that his funeral would be private.

His two most rewarding film partnerships were with the director Billy Wilder, who directed Lemmon with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Irma La Douce and The Front Page, and with Walter Mathau, with whom he starred in eight films.

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

Joan Tetzel

Joan Tetzel was born in 1921 in New York City. She acted on Broadway and on the West End in London. Her film appearances include “Duel in the Sun” with Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck and with Peck again in 1947 in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Paradine Case” with also starred Louis Jourdan, Alida Valli and Ann Todd. Joan Tetzel was married to actor Oscar Holomka. She died in 1977 aged 56.

IMDB entry:

Aside from her movie career, Joan Tetzel was well known as a Broadway and London stage actress. She played nurse Ratchett in the Broadway edition of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” During the early seventies, she appeared in the London play, “How The Other Half Loves.” During this period, she had a running part in the TV series “Policewoman.” As a noted stage actress, her picture appeared on the front cover of Life Magazine on February 14, 1948. She died in Sussex England from cancer.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: <tcampbel@p05.ahcpr.gov>

“Wikipedia” entry:

Tetzel is noted for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Paradine Case (1947), where she played “Judy Flaquer”, the daughter of the solicitor played by Charles Coburn in the film. In the movie, she is the confidante and best friend of the wife (Ann Todd) of defense lawyer Anthony Keane (Gregory Peck), and is able to objectively see how Keane is ruining his marriage because of his infatuation with Mrs. Paradine (Alida Valli). Her other film appearances included Duel in the Sun (1946), The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), Hell Below Zero (1954) and Joy in the Morning (1965).

She worked with Alfred Hitchcock in his TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She played “Eve Ross” in the Alfred Hitchcock Presentsepisode “Guest for Breakfast”. She appeared as Marian Stuart, wife of the title character, in the 1963 Perry Mason episode, “The Case of the Decadent Dean.” She also made appearances on Thriller in the episode “An Attractive Family”, and Gunsmoke. Aside from her movie career, Tetzel was a well-known stage actress. She appeared in the 1940 revival of Liliom, the original stage production of I Remember Mama, and portrayed Nurse Ratched in the stage production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on Broadway. As a noted stage actress, her photo appeared on the front cover of Life Magazine on February 16, 1948.

Her first husband was radio producer John E. Mosman. Her second husband was Oscar Homolka (1898–1978), whom she married in 1949. Joan Tetzel died October 31, 1977, at her home Beri-Be-Dahn, Fairwarp, Sussex, England, aged 56, from cancer.

Paul Burke was born in New Orleans in 1926. He has acted in three very popular television series, “Harbourmaster” in 1957, “Naked City” fron 1960 until 1963 and “12 O’Clock High” from 1964 until 1967. His film roles include “The Valley of the Dolls'” with Barbara Parkins in 1969 and then two years later “Daddy’s Gone A Hunting” with Carol White.

Gayr Brumburgh’s entry:

Tall, dark, and handsome is how Hollywood liked their leading men back in the 1950s and 1960s, and actor Paul Burke certainly fit the bill. While his career fell short of outright stardom, he managed to stand out in a couple of acclaimed TV cop series series in the 1960s and “enjoyed” semi-cult notice by co-starring in one of the screen’s most celebrated turkeys of all time.

The New Orleans-born actor was born on July 21, 1926, the son of Martin Burke, a prizefighter who later became a well-known promoter and French Quarter nightclub owner (“Marty Burke’s”). Educated at prep schools, he was drawn to acting and moved to Hollywood in the late 1940s, studying at the Pasadena Playhouse for a couple of years. Screen director Lloyd Bacon, a friend of his father Marty, helped the fledgling actor along by giving him an unbilled part in the Betty Grable musical Call Me Mister (1951). From there, he managed to scrounge up bit/uncredited parts in such 1950s films as Fearless Fagan (1952); Francis Goes to West Point (1952), Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), South Sea Woman (1953), and Spy Chasers (1955). He moved up the ladder a bit to featured status in another Francis the talking mule picture, Francis in the Navy (1955), and inScreaming Eagles (1956), then earned a starring role in the voodoo/jungle horror flick The Disembodied (1957), opposite the “50-Foot Woman,” herself, Allison Hayes.

Better yet, Paul found steady work on the small tube with grim-faced roles in a number of crime series such as Highway Patrol (1955),

The Lineup (1954), M Squad (1957), and Dragnet (1951). He also appeared in Adventures of Superman (1952). Via an association with “Dragnet” producer/director Jack Webb, he received his own TV series, albeit short lived, in the form of Noah’s Ark (1956), portraying veterinarian “Dr. Noah McCann.” He followed that by co-starring with Barry Sullivan in another one-season series, Harbormaster (1957), a New England coast adventure yarn, and then in Five Fingers (1959), a spy drama headlining David Hedison. Another hit series came with 12 O’Clock High (1964), based on the hit film drama of the same name.

Paul’s best-known TV role, however, was as “Detective Adam Flint” in the highly praised police series Naked City (1958), replacing James Franciscus. He joined the program in the second season as the young partner of “Lt. Mike Parker” (portrayed by Horace McMahon), just as the half-hour show format was being extended to an hour. Based on the gritty, groundbreaking cop movie The Naked City (1948), the series did the film more than justice with excellent story lines, and Burke walked away with two Emmy nominations out of the three seasons he appeared.

His only movie role in the early 1960s was the Joan Crawford starrer Della (1964) (aka Fatal Confinement), which was actually a failed pilot to a prospective TV series. Winning the co-lead role of fledgling writer “Lyon Burke” in the highly anticipated film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann‘s monstrous best seller, Valley of the Dolls (1967). It could have been the break to turn things around on film. It did not-far from it. The Susann book was, if anything, a guilty pleasure as readers were reeled in by the trashy Hollywood themes of drugs, fame, and sex. The movie was a laughable misfire-riddled with bad acting, bad dialogue and inept directing. It earned instant cult infamy, making many “top 10” lists for worst movie ever. It also damaged the screen careers of many of the talent involved. In reality, Paul and Barbara Parkins, who played his paramour in the movie, actually came off better and more grounded than most. Unfortunately, good or bad, they were identified with a huge turkey, and it stuck.

Despite Paul’s co-star cop role, opposite Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, in the stylish thriller The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the very next year, it was not able to right the wrong of “Dolls.” Thereafter, Paul tended to be overlooked in his later film, which included standard starring roles both here and abroad in such fare as Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969), Once You Kiss a Stranger… (1969), and Maharlika (1970). TV crime, however, proved again to be a reliable paycheck for Paul with guest roles in such popular 70s series as The Rookies (1972), The New Perry Mason (1973), Police Woman (1974),Harry O (1973), Mannix (1967), Ironside (1967), and the acclaimed Police Story (1973) series. TV movies also came his way, as well, with the starring role of tycoon “C.C. Capwell” (replacing Peter Mark Richman), in the daytime soap opera Santa Barbara(1984). Paul himself was replaced after a relatively brief time.

He played assured roles in the series Hot Shots (1986) and Dynasty (1981), the latter as scheming “Congressman Neal McVane,” who frames Joan Collins‘ character for murder. Paul’s last film, (The Fool (1990), which was shot in England) and last TV guest role (in an episode of “Columbo”) both came out in 1990.

Divorced from Peggy Pryor, the mother of his three children, Paul married actress Lyn Peters in 1979. They met while she was appearing in the 12 O’Clock High (1964) episode12 O’Clock High: Siren Voices (1966). The couple eventually retired to Palm Springs, where the actor died at age 83 of leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in September of 2009.

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

His “Independent” obituary:

Paul Burke will best be remembered for the three years he spent as the star of the highly regarded television series, The Naked City, which was filmed on the streets and in the buildings of Manhattan.

Inspired by the 1948 film of the same name, it was innovative in its use of location shooting all over the metropolis, from the Staten Island Ferry to Times Square, which gave it a semi-documentary feel, and though Burke was not the most animated of actors, he was handsome and had a tight-lipped doggedness that suited his portrayal of the tough police detective who manages to maintain his integrity and idealism despite confronting the worst aspects of Manhattan life. (The show could never be accused of glamorising New York City.)

“There are eight million stories in the naked city… this has been one of them,” intoned the narrator-producer Mark Hellinger at the end of the movie, and the same words were uttered at the climax of every episode of the television series (shown in the UK by ITV). Although Burke starred in other television shows and had a recurring role in Dynasty, his film career was chequered, despite his playing the leading male role in the colossal hit Valley of the Dolls (1967) and giving arguably his finest performance as the police detective determined to outwit bank robber Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

Born in New Orleans in 1926, Burke was the son of the prize fighter Martin Burke (who once fought the world heavyweight champion Gene Tunney). After retiring from the ring, he opened a restaurant and night club, Marty Burke’s, in the city’s French Quarter. Paul used to help out in the club, and later stated that seeing some of the customers affected his outlook: “I stayed up late watching the barflies, the brawlers. I watched the effect of wasted lives. It gave me a strong feeling of urgency about my own life.”

In his early 20s he moved to Hollywood and studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. The director Lloyd Bacon, one of his father’s friends, got him his first screen roles, uncredited parts in the musicals Golden Girl and Call Me Mister (both 1951), the latter a Betty Grable vehicle in which he played a soldier. He was a soldier also in Sam Fuller’s Fixed Bayonets (1951), and he had small roles in two films featuring Francis, the talking mule – Francis Goes to West Point (1952) and Francis in the Navy (1955), plus South Sea Woman (1953), with Burt Lancaster and Virginia Mayo.

He graduated to guest-star roles in such television series as Highway Patrol, Dragnet and M Squad, and in 1964 he co-starred with Joan Crawford and Diane Baker in a TV movie, Della, a fanciful tale in which he was Crawford’s lawyer who falls in love with her daughter, unaware that she has a skin disease that will be fatal if she is exposed to sunlight. His first recurring role on television was that of a veterinarian in a short-lived television series, Noah’s Ark (1956-57), followed by Harbourmaster (1957-58) with Barry Sullivan, and an unsuccessful spy series, Five Fingers (1959), which was loosely based on the Joseph L. Mankiewiez film of 1952.

The Naked City began its television life as a weekly 30-minute show in 1958, with John McIntire and James Franciscus playing the roles originated in the movie by Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor. Despite good reviews, its ratings were poor. McIntire’s character was killed off halfway through the season, and the show itself was cancelled at the end of the year, but the production staff and one of the sponsors successfully lobbied the network, ABC, to revive it as an hour-long series, which first aired in 1960, starring Burke as Detective Adam Flint with Nancy Malone playing his loyal, if sometimes stressed, girlfriend. Harry Bellaver was Burke’s older partner and Horace McMahon his crusty superior.

Burke received two Emmy nominations for his performance, and was admired for doing several of his own stunts. “Once I had to jump from one roof to another,” he told the columnist Hedda Hopper, “when the stuntman refused because it was too windy to take a chance.” To prepare for the role, he accompanied police detectives on raids, commenting, “I know areas of the city that are truly jungles. I wouldn’t be a detective there for $1,000 a day.” Before an episode in which his character was to witness an execution, he spent a night in Sing Sing prison. “The area of the condemned has barred windows that look down over the Hudson,” he said. “You can see trains going by, as if to emphasise the life outside that is to be taken away. I was not against capital punishment before we made that show – but now, I don’t know.”

When The Naked City ended its run in 1963, it was described by the Los Angeles Times as, “television’s finest weekly hour. It took the police show and gave it a dignity and compassion that at times approached high tragedy.” Stirling Silliphant, later to win an Oscar for scripting In The Heat of the Night, was primary writer on the series, Billy May provided the jazzy theme music, and directors included John Brahm, Buzz Kulick, Arthur Hiller and Tay Garnett.

The New York location offered a pool of theatrical acting talent, some of them newcomers on the threshold of distinguished careers – they included Robert Redford, Tuesday Weld, Walter Matthau, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Peter Falk, Martin Sheen, Rip Torn, Jon Voight and Christopher Walken. The show’s quality, and its tradition of building shows more around the guest stars than its regular cast, also prompted seasoned performers to seek out roles, among them Eli Wallach, Viveca Lindfors, Betty Field, Sylvia Sidney, Steve Cochran and Kim Hunter.

Burke had further success on television when he starred as a Second World War Air Force colonel in the series Twelve O’Clock High (1964-67). He played his first starring role in a movie when given the male lead (billed third to Barbara Parkin and Patty Duke) in Valley of the Dolls (1967), Mark Robson’s screen version of Jacqueline Susann’s best-selling novel about addiction to pills (the “dolls” of the title). Though Robson had made a splendid job of transferring a similarly exploitative novel, Peyton Place, to the screen in 1957, Valley of the Dolls was a tawdry effort which nevertheless made a fortune while doing little for Burke, whose role as a young lawyer who befriends the film’s three heroines and has an affair with Parkin, was colourless.

Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), primarily a glossy vehicle for Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, gave Burke his best screen role, as a police detective partnering insurance investigator Dunaway to trap millionaire bank robber McQueen. He was a lawyer again in Mark Robson’s Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969), a thriller in which his wife (Carol White) is terrorised by an ex-boyfriend who wants her to kill her own baby because she once concealed an abortion from him. Risibly melodramatic, it effectively ended the Hollywood careers of both Burke and White.

Burke returned to television, guest-starring in such shows as The Love Boat, Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels and Murder, She Wrote. In the lavish soap opera Dynasty, he had a recurring role from 1982-88 as Congressman Neal McVane, who murders the ex-husband of Krystle Carrington, a crime for which Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins) is convicted. He also had a recurring role as Rear Admiral Hawkes in Magnum, P.I., starring Tom Selleck.

In 1990, after a role in Columbo, Burke retired to Palm Springs with his second wife, Lyn, whom he had married in 1979. “Acting is more exciting than living,” he told TV Guide during the run of The Naked City. “It’s more electric, more immediate. That’s because life is full of random elements. In acting, you select, you choose the elements. This selection allows you to get to the essence of the character, the essence of an experience.” He is survived by his wife, and three children from his first marriage.

Paul Burke, actor: born New Orleans 21 July 1926; twice married (two daughters, one son); died: Palm Springs, California 13 September 2009.

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