Peter Donat was born in 1928 in Nova Scotia, Canada. He is a nephew of British actor Robert Donat. His films include “The Godfather Part Two” in 1974, “The Hindenburg”, “The China Syndrome” and “Babe”. He has guest starred in virtually all of the major television series in the U.S.
IMDB entry:
The Cando-American actor Peter Donat had a 50-year-long career in TV, motion pictures and theater. So respected was Donat, that Francis Ford Coppola considered casting him in the role of Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972) that went to Robert Duvall.
The nephew of Oscar-winning actor Robert Donat, Peter was born Pierre Collingwood Donat on January 20, 1928 in Kentville, Nova Scotia. His father, landscape gardener Philip Donat, was Anglo-Canadian while his Marie (née Bardet) was French-Canadian.
In 1950, the 22-year-old Donat moved to the United States to study drama at Yale. (He is a naturalized U.S. citizen.) Donat frequently returned to Canada for acting work, appearing in the lead in a 1961 production of Donald Jack‘s play “The Canvas Barricade” at the Stratford Festival. He was also in the Canadian TV serial Moment of Truth (1964), which was broadcast on a commercial TV in the States.
Peter Donat was married for 16 years to Emmy-winner Michael Learned. The couple, who divorced in 1972, had three children. when they divorced. They have three children – Caleb, Christopher and Lucas.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: v
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Mary Wickes was a wonderful American character actress. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1910. She first came to screen attention in 1942 in “Now Voyager” with Bette Davis. Her other films include “JUne Bride”, “Anna Lucasta”, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon”, “Good Morning Miss Dove” and “Fate Is the Hunter”. In her eighties she gave sterling performanes in “Postcards from the Edge”, “Sister Act” and “Little Women” with Susan Sarandon. She died in 1995 in Los Angeles. A new biography of Ms Wickes is published in 2013.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
From the grand old school of wisecracking, loud and lanky Mary Wickes had few peers while forging a career as a salty scene-stealer. Her abrupt, tell-it-like-it-is demeanor made her a consistent audience favorite on every medium for over six decades. She was particularly adroit in film parts that chided the super rich or exceptionally pious, and was a major chastiser in generation-gap comedies. TV holds a vault full of not-to-be-missed vignettes where she served as a brusque foil to many a top TV comic star. Case in point: who could possibly forget her merciless ballet taskmaster, Madame Lamond, puttingLucille Ball through her rigorous paces at the ballet bar in a classic I Love Lucy (1951) episode?
Unlike the working-class characters she embraced, this veteran character comedienne was actually born Mary Isabella Wickenhauser on June 13, 1910, in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a well-to-do banker. Of Irish and German heritage, she grew into a society débutante following high school and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science. She forsook a law career, however, after being encouraged by a college professor to try theater, and she made her debut doing summer stock in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The rest, as they say, is history.
Prodded on by the encouragement of stage legend Ina Claire whom she met doing summer theater, Mary transported herself to New York where she quickly earned a walk-on part in the Broadway play “The Farmer Takes a Wife” starring Henry Fonda in 1934. In the show she also understudied The Wizard of Oz (1939)’s “Wicked Witch” Margaret Hamilton, and earned excellent reviews when she went on in the part. Plain and hawkish in looks while noticeably tall and gawky in build, Mary was certainly smart enough to see that comedy would become her career path and she enjoyed showing off in roles playing much older than she was. New York stage work continued to pour in, and she garnered roles in “Spring Dance” (1936), “Stage Door” (1936), “Hitch Your Wagon” (1937), “Father Malachy’s Miracle (1937) and, in an unusual bit of casting, Orson Welles‘ Mercury Theatre production of “Danton’s Death.” All the while she kept fine-tuning her acting craft in summer stock.
A series of critically panned plays followed until a huge door opened for her in the form of Miss Preen, the beleaguered nurse to an acid-tongued, wheelchair-bound radio star (played by the hilarious Monty Woolley) in the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” Oddly enough, for once, it was Mary doing the cowering. The play was the toast of Broadway for two wacky years and she went on tour with it as well. She also become a Kaufman favorite.
Hollywood took notice as well, and when Warner Bros. decided to film the play, it allowed both Mary and Woolley to recreate their classic roles. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), which co-starred Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan, was a grand film hit and Mary was now officially on board in Hollywood, given plenty of chances to freelance. At Warners she lightened up the proceedings a bit in the Bette Davis tearjerker Now, Voyager (1942) as the nurse to Gladys Cooper. Elsewhere she traded quips with Lou Costello as a murder suspect in the amusing whodunit Who Done It? (1942); played a WAC in Private Buckaroo (1942) with The Andrews Sisters; and dished out her patented smart-alecky services in both Happy Land (1943) and My Kingdom for a Cook (1943).
Mary returned to Broadway for a few seasons, often for Kaufman, and did some radio work as well, but returned to Hollywood and played yet another nurse in The Decision of Christopher Blake (1948), a part written especially for her. She appeared with ‘Bette Davis (I)’ for a third time in June Bride (1948), finding some fine moments playing a magazine editor. Mary went on to perform yeoman work in On Moonlight Bay (1951) and its sequel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953); I’ll See You in My Dreams (1951);White Christmas (1954) and The Music Man (1962), the last as one of the “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little” housewives of River City.
Television roles also began filtering in for Mary as she continued to put her cryptic comedy spin on her harried housekeepers, teachers, servants and other working commoner types. Mary played second banana to a queue of comedy’s best known legends in the 1950s and 1960s, notably Lucille Ball (who was a long-time neighbor and pal off-screen), Danny Thomas, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lind Hayes and Gertrude Berg. Her stellar work with Ms. Berg on the series The Gertrude Berg Show (1961) garnered Mary an Emmy nomination. Among babyboomers, she is probably best remembered as Miss Cathcart in Dennis the Menace (1959).
In later years Mary’s gangly figure filled out a bit as she continued to appear here and there on the small screen in both guest star and series’ regular parts. Later in life she enjoyed a bit of a resurgence. Recalled earlier for her Sister Clarissa in the madcap comedy films The Trouble with Angels (1966) and its sequel, Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968), both with Rosalind Russell, Mary donned the habit once again decades later as crabby musical director Sister Mary Lazarus in the box-office smash Sister Act(1992) and its sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). She also churned out a few roles as cranky, matter-of-fact relatives in both Postcards from the Edge (1990) as Meryl Streep‘s grandmother and ‘Shirley Maclaine”s mother, and in Little Women (1994) as Aunt March opposite Winona Ryder Jo. True to form, one of her last roles was voicing a gargoyle in the animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), which was released after her death.
The never-married Los Angeles-based performer died in October of 1995 after entering the hospital with respiratory problems. While a patient there, Mary suffered a broken hip from an accidental fall and complications quickly set in following surgery. She was 85 years young. When it came to deadpan comedy, Mary was certainly no second banana. She was a truly a star.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Peter Allen was born in 1944 in Tenterfield, New South Wales, Australia. He was a terrific singer and songwriter whose career was based mostly in the U.S. He did feature in some films including “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” in 1978 and “The Pirates of Penzance” in 1982. Peter Allen died in 1992 in San Diego, California at the age of 46.
Australian Dictionary of Irish Biography by Michelle Arrow:
Peter Allen (1944–1992), singer, songwriter, and entertainer, was born Peter Richard Woolnough on 10 February 1944 at Tenterfield, New South Wales, elder of two children of New South Wales-born parents Richard John Woolnough, soldier and grocer, and his wife Marion Bryden, née Davidson. His grandfather, George Woolnough, was a saddle maker, whom he later immortalised in the song ‘Tenterfield Saddler’ (1972). Raised in Armidale, Peter’s performing career began when he was eleven, playing the piano in the ladies’ lounge of the New England Hotel. Educated at Armidale High School, he left school after his violent and alcoholic father committed suicide in November 1958, and moved to Lismore with his mother and sister. In 1959 he went to Surfers Paradise to look for work and met Chris Bell, an English-born singer-guitarist of a similar age. Assisted by Bell’s father, and inspired by the chart-topping Everly Brothers, they formed a singing duo called the ‘Allen Brothers,’ making their debut at the Grand Hotel in Coolangatta. Within a year they were based in Sydney, had signed a recording contract, and reached a national audience through the television program Bandstand.
The Allen Brothers toured Australia and Asia. In 1964 the American singer and actress Judy Garland saw them performing at the Hong Kong Hilton and invited them to be the opening act for her upcoming concert tour of the United States of America. Chris and Peter Allen, as they became known, performed in American nightclubs for the rest of the decade, releasing their only album in 1968. On 3 March 1967 in New York, Peter married Garland’s daughter, the singer and actress Liza Minnelli. They separated in 1970 when Allen acknowledged his homosexuality, and were divorced in 1974.
In 1970 Allen also parted ways with Chris Bell and pursued a solo career. Initially performing at small clubs in New York and Los Angeles, he formed a song-writing partnership with Carole Bayer Sager that produced a number of enduring favourites, including ‘Don’t Cry Out Loud’ (1976). His songs were increasingly performed by other artists: Olivia Newton-John’s recording of ‘I Honestly Love You,’ which Allen co-wrote with Jeff Barry, topped the American charts and earned two Grammy awards in 1974, including Record of the Year. In 1977 ‘I Go To Rio,’ from his successful album Taught by Experts (1976), was a hit in Australia, France, and Brazil.
Allen’s biggest successes came in the early 1980s. He presented a series of concerts at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 1981, becoming the first male performer to dance with the venue’s famous dance troupe, the Rockettes. In 1982 (with Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Christopher Cross) he won an Academy award for best original song, for ‘Arthur’s Theme’ (from the film Arthur, starring Dudley Moore and Minnelli). His fame and popularity also grew in Australia, which he visited frequently. During his 1980 tour, a Festival Records executive, Alan Hely, noticing that Allen closed his shows by saying ‘I still call Australia home,’ suggested it would make a good song title. Allen agreed and the song became his best loved. His greatest career disappointment was the failure of his musical, Legs Diamond, which was savaged by critics after its premiere on Broadway in 1988.
Allen was charismatic if not conventionally handsome: he had a prominent nose and chin and a receding hairline, but a warm smile and a lithe frame, which was often clad in his trademark Hawaiian shirts. A cheeky, exuberant performer, he was open about his homosexuality at a time when many of his contemporaries were not. From around 1970 he was in a relationship with Greg Connell, a male model from Texas who later worked as the sound and light designer on Allen’s live shows. According to Allen’s biographer, Connell was ‘Peter’s big love’ (Maclean 1996, 166). Connell died from AIDS in 1984.
In 1990 Allen was appointed AM in recognition of his contribution to the performing arts. Diagnosed with throat cancer during a tour of Australia in January 1992, he died of AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma on 18 June 1992 in San Diego, California. The prime minister of Australia, Paul Keating, paid tribute to Allen’s ‘songs of sensitivity which struck an emotional chord with his fellow Australians’ (Jones and Hallett 1992, 11). In 1993 he was posthumously inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame. His life was retold in a musical, The Boy From Oz (1998), written by Nick Enright and featuring Allen’s greatest hits. The National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, holds a tender portrait (1980) of Allen by the photographer William Yang.
Jack Elam was born in 1918 in Arizona. “A Ticket to Tomahawk” in 1950 was his first major film. He made many Westerns including “Rawhide”, “High Noon”, “Rancho Notorious”, “The Far Country” and “Cattle Queen of Montana”. He died in 2003 at the age of 84.
IMDB entry:
Colorful American character actor equally adept at vicious killers or grizzled sidekicks. As a child he worked in the cotton fields. He attended Santa Monica Junior College in California and subsequently became an accountant and, at one time, manager of the Bel Air Hotel. Elam got his first movie job by trading his accounting services for a role. In short time he became one of the most memorable supporting players in Hollywood, thanks not only to his near-demented screen persona but also to an out-of-kilter left eye, sightless from a childhood fight. He appeared with great aplomb in Westerns and gangster films alike, and in later years played to wonderful effect in comedic roles.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
“Guardian” obituary:
In Anthony Mann’s classic 1955 western, The Man From Laramie, Jack Elam, who has died aged 86, introduces his character as follows: “I can’t give you any references, but anyone can tell you Chris Boldt is not a man to be trusted.” Later on, he tries to backstab James Stewart and winds up dead in a dark alley. That role, and many more like it, in over 50 other westerns, made Elam one of the best-known, and best-loved, character actors in the genre. With his bony, stubbled face, beetle-brows looming over a dead left eye, and gravelly voice, he was the very embodiment of a skulking, no-account, two-bit varmint, and the relish with which he played his parts made every appearance, however fleeting, a pleasure.
Jack Elam, the son of an accountant, was born in Miami, Arizona, a small mining town outside Phoenix, in 1916 (though he would later suggest that he had added two years to his age in order to get work). As a child, he earned money gleaning cotton, and, at the age of 12, lost the use of his left eye in an accident at scout camp. After graduating from Phoenix Union high school, he moved to California where he completed business studies at Modesto and Santa Monica junior colleges, before working as a hotel manager, and then an accountant for Standard Oil.
Following two years’ service in the US Navy during the second world war, Elam joined Willam Boyd’s Hopalong Cassidy Productions as an auditor, while also doing outside work for other companies.
In 1948, Elam quit accountancy, after being warned that he was imperilling the sight in his right eye. He agreed to raise finances for three low-budget films in return for acting parts, and, in 1949, made his debut as The Killer in a short film entitled Trailin’ West. Within three years, he had made his mark as a villain in Henry Hathaway’s Rawhide (1951), and notched up appearances in Fritz Lang’s flamboyant Rancho Notorious and Fred Zinnemann’s classic High Noon (both 1952) – in the latter he had a brief scene as Charlie, the town drunk.
In 1954, he could be seen in Robert Aldrich’s influential Vera Cruz, and Anthony Mann’s The Far Country, in which, as baddie John McIntire’s deputy, he is gunned down in the final reel by James Stewart, the usual fate of Elam’s heavies, assuming they lasted that long.
In 1955, Elam cut an alarming figure in a floral-print shirt and shorts as one of Paul Stewart’s henchmen in Aldrich’s seedy and brilliant thriller, Kiss Me Deadly, as well as appearing in Fritz Lang’s costume drama, Moonfleet.
By the mid-1960s, Elam was playing featured parts in big-budget productions. In 1968, he was seen in Vincent McEveety’s Firecreek and, that same year, travelled to Spain for what would become his most celebrated role, as one of a trio of gunslingers in the opening sequence of Sergio Leone’s magnificent Once Upon A Time In The West. Together with Woody Strode and Al Muloch (who had played a part rejected by Elam in Leone’s earlier The Good, The Bad And The Ugly), Elam is seen killing time at Cattle Corner station. A fly crawls over his jowls. Elam tries to dislodge it but it keeps returning. Eventually, he traps it in his gun barrel, a sly, childlike grin on his face. A train arrives. Charles Bronson appears. Words are spoken. Guns fire, and Jack Elam bites the dust, a whole career encapsulated in one, unforgettable scene.
Elam’s later roles tended towards the comic, partly as a result of his success in Burt Kennedy’s comedy westerns, Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), and partly as a result of his advancing age. He was in fine form, alongside Ernest Borgnine and Strother Martin, in the improbable Raquel Welch vehicle, Hannie Caulder (1972), as well as the TV mini-series The Sacketts (1979), but his last great part was probably in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973), in which he plays a lawman whose sense of duty forces him into a gunfight that he knows he cannot win. “Least I’ll be remembered,” he says before dying.
A gregarious man who enjoyed “cigars, Cutty Sark, and a good poker game”, Elam is survived by his second wife and daughter, and a son and daughter from a previous marriage.
· Jack Elam, actor, born November 13 1916; died October 20 2003
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Jimmie Rodgers is primarily known as a country/pop singer but he has featured on film. He was born in 1933 in Washington State. His more popular songs include “Kisses Sweeter than Wine”, “Are You Really Mine” and “English Country Garden”. His film include “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come” in 1960 and “Back Door to Hell”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:.
He was born September 18, 1933 in Camas, Washington, a few months after beloved Country Music Hall of Fame singer Jimmie Rodgers (known as “The Singing Brakeman”) died of consumption. They were not related but perhaps Jimmie’s mother, a piano teacher who often played for silent movie houses, was inspired to name her son after the country legend as the same exact spelling of the first name occurred. His mother taught the musically-inclined Jimmie the piano and guitar. He formed bands and served at one time with the U.S. Air Force. He later was discovered on Arthur Godfrey‘s talent show and was signed by Roulette Records, an offshoot of RCA.
In the late 50s, Jimmie’s easy folk-pop style and melodic renderings caught on fast. A wonderful alternative to the rock-and-roll, he found a #1 overnight hit with the song “Honeycomb” in 1957 and followed things up with a handful of “top 10” singles including “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” “Secretly,” “Waltzing Matilda” and “Are You Really Mine.” Signed by Roulette Records, he severed ties with the record company in 1960 after a money dispute and signed with Dot Records the following year.
Jimmie became a popular commodity during these years, touring with the likes of Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Frankie Avalon. He made TV appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “American Bandstand” to the delight of his fans, and even parlayed his singing fame into a brief movie career with lead performances in the remake of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1961), in which he co-starred with Disney’sLuana Patten, and the war drama Back Door to Hell (1964). Both were only mildly received.
Things looked very promising with a TV summer series “The Jimmie Rodgers Show.” Not an electric performer by any stretch, the good-looking singer with the trademark cleft chin had a natural and easygoing charm that appealed to the masses. In 1967, however, right after signing with A&M, Jimmie’s life and career changed forever. In December of 1967, he was stopped by an off-duty police officer on the freeway after leaving a party. The details are sketchy and the incident remains a mystery, but Jimmie somehow suffered a severe skull fracture as a result of the encounter and claims the police brutally attacked him. The police report maintains that Rodgers was intoxicated and hurt himself when he stumbled and fell. Jimmie later sued the City of Los Angeles and settled out of court. His life, however, would never be the same.
I Jimmie attempted a comeback of sorts, appearing regularly on “The Joey Bishop Show” in 1969, but after three brain surgeries he still suffered from convulsions and had trouble with balance. A portion of his face also sagged and he did not like appearing on camera for that reason. Forced into retirement in later years, he devoted himself to religion and performed only on occasion in the concert venue. Some of his more popular songs can still be heard on commercials. He was married three times and has five children.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
New York Times obituary in 2021:
Jimmie Rodgers, whose smooth voice straddled the line between pop and country and brought him a string of hits — none bigger than his first record, “Honeycomb,” in 1957 — died on Jan. 18 in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 87.
His daughter Michele Rodgers said that the cause was kidney disease and that he had also tested positive for Covid-19.
Mr. Rodgers was a regular presence on the pop, country, R&B and easy listening charts for a decade after “Honeycomb,” with records that included “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again” (1958) and “Child of Clay” (1967), both of which were nominated for Grammy Awards.
He might have continued that run of success but for an ugly incident in December 1967, when he was pulled over by a man who, he later said, was an off-duty Los Angeles police officer and beat him severely.
Three brain surgeries followed, and he was left with a metal plate in his head. He eventually resumed performing, and even briefly had his own television show, but he faced constant difficulties. For a time he was sidelined because he started having seizures during concerts.
“Once word gets out that you’re having seizures onstage, you can’t work,” he told The News Sentinel of Knoxville, Tenn., in 1998. “People won’t hire you.”
Mr. Rodgers was found to have spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder characterized by spasms in the muscles of the voice box, a condition he attributed to his brain injury. Yet he later settled into a comfortable niche as a performer and producer in Branson, Mo., the country music mecca, where he had his own theater for several years before retiring to California in 2002.
James Frederick Rodgers was born on Sept. 18, 1933, in Camas, Wash., in the southwest part of the state. (Four months earlier, a more famous Jimmie Rodgers, the singer known as the father of country music, had died; the two were unrelated.) His mother, Mary (Schick) Rodgers, was a piano teacher, and his father, Archie, worked in a paper mill. Jimmie started out singing in church and school groups.
After graduating from high school, he briefly attended Clark College in Washington State but left to enlist in the Air Force, serving in Korea during the Korean War. In a 2016 interview with The Spectrum, a Utah newspaper, he recalled one particular evening near Christmas 1953.
“I bought a beat-up old guitar from a guy for $10 and started playing and singing one night and all the guys joined in,” he said. “We were sitting on the floor with only candles for light, and these tough soldiers had tears running down their cheeks. I realized if my music could have that effect, that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”
Back in the States and stationed near Nashville, he started performing in a nightclub for $10 a night and free drinks before returning to Washington after mustering out. In 1957 he traveled to New York to perform on a TV talent show and also snagged an audition for Roulette Records, singing “Honeycomb,” a Bob Merrill song he had learned off a recording by Georgie Shaw and had been performing in the Nashville club.
“They basically said, ‘Don’t go any further, that’s great,’” he said in an interview with Gary James for classicbands.com.
Mr. Rodgers was taken to a studio to record what he thought would be a demo with musicians he had only just met.
“They brought in four players and three singers and we recorded it in about two hours — no charts, no music,” he said in a 2010 oral history for the National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association.
A week or two later, he was surprised to hear the song on the radio. It reached the top of the Billboard pop and R&B charts.
Later that year he had another success with his version of a song that had been a hit for the Weavers, “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” giving it an up-tempo kick and injecting key changes similar to what he had used in “Honeycomb.”
“I was told that they won’t sell — records that change keys, people can’t sing along with them,” Mr. Rodgers recalled in an oral history recorded in 2002 for the National Association of Music Merchants. The public disagreed.
His early songs, released as Elvis Presley was shaking up the music scene, were a sort of comfort food, jaunty yet melodic and not too earthshaking. In 1959 his quick popularity earned him his own television variety show, which ran for one season.
“If his singing style calls for more emphasis on beat than lilt,” Jack Gould wrote of its premiere in The New York Times, “at least it has the virtue of being well this side of rock ’n’ roll.”
Mr. Rodgers dabbled in acting in the 1960s, including a leading role in “Back Door to Hell,” a 1964 war movie whose cast also included Jack Nicholson. In 1965, “Honeycomb” found new life when Post introduced a cereal by that name, repurposing the song to advertise it, the jingle sung by Mr. Rodgers. He also sang a SpaghettiOs jingle that riffed on his “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again.”
Mr. Rodgers said he was under consideration for a featured role in the 1968 movie musical “Finian’s Rainbow” when the encounter on the freeway derailed his career. In his telling, he was driving home late at night when the driver behind him flashed his lights. He thought it was his conductor, who was also driving to Mr. Rodgers’s house, and pulled over.
“I rolled the window down to ask what was the matter,” he told The Toronto Star in 1987. “That’s the last thing I remember.”
He ended up with a fractured skull and broken arm. He said the off-duty officer who had pulled him over called two on-duty officers to the scene, but all three scattered when his conductor, who went looking for Mr. Rodgers when he hadn’t arrived home, drove up.
The police told a different story: They said Mr. Rodgers had been drunk and had injured himself when he fell. Mr. Rodgers sued the Los Angeles Police Department, prompting a countersuit; the matter was settled out of court in his favor to the tune of $200,000.
During his long recovery Mr. Rodgers got another shot at a TV series, a summer replacement variety show in 1969.
“I looked like a ghost,” he admitted in a 2004 interview.
His marriages to Colleen McClatchy and Trudy Ann Buck ended in divorce. In 1978, he married Mary Louise Biggerstaff. She survives him.
In addition to her and his daughter Michele, he is survived by a son, Michael, from his first marriage; two sons from his second marriage, Casey and Logan; a daughter from his third marriage, Katrine Rodgers; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Perry Lopez was born in New York City in 1929. He began his career on the New York stage. His films include “Creatures from the Black Lagoon” and “Young Guns”. He had a major role in Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” in 1974 with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Perry Lopez died in 2008.
“Mitzi Gaynor flashed but briefly on cinema screens, a happy chirpy girl seemingly hurt once musicals stopped staple product at each studio.” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Stars”. (1972)
Mitzi Gaynor was born in 1931 in Chicago of Hungarian parents. She made her movie debut in 1950 in “My BLue Heaven” which starred Betty Grable. Throuhout the 1950;s she starred in such musicals as “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, “Anything Goes”, “The Joker Is Wild”, “Les Girls” and her most popular movie “South Pacific” in 1958. During the 1960’s she toured with her own show and made many television spectactulars over the next 20 years.
TCM Overview:
This blonde dancer and light actress appeared in Hollywood musicals beginning in the early 1950s. Among her more notable efforts were “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1954), the 1956 remake of “Anything Goes,” with Bing Crosby and Donald O’Connor, and “Les Girls” (1957), opposite Gene Kelly. Gaynor had two outstandig screen roles: as a girlfriend of nightclub comedian Joe E Lewis (played by Frank Sinatra) in “The Joker Is Wild” (1957) and as Nellie Forbush in the the screen version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” (1958).Beginning in the late 1950s, Gaynor began to appear on various variety series, eventually headlining her own NBC special in 1968, “Mitzi.” Between 1973 and 1978, she appeared annually on CBS in a series of high-concept, entertaining variety specials.
Mitzi Gaynor, who has died aged 93, enjoyed a rapid rise to stardom in the 1950s, appearing opposite stellar leading men including Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly and David Niven and bringing a hard-edged glamour to her unconventional looks, which were remarkable for her high cheekbones and merry eyes.
After early appearances in films such as Golden Girl (1951), Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952) and Anything Goes (1956), she made her big breakthrough in the Rodgers and Hammerstein blockbuster musical South Pacific (1958) as Nellie Forbush, the young US Navy nurse who was determined to “wash that man right outta my hair.
The role had been created on the Broadway stage in 1949 by Mary Martin, but she was judged too old, and Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein cast Mitzi Gaynor, some 20 years younger, for the film version.
In the event both Rodgers and Hammerstein hated the film, mainly because of the extreme colour filters that some critics felt ruined every song. Even so, Mitzi Gaynor recognised that the book and score of South Pacific, with its theme of racial tolerance, transcended the standard Hollywood froth. As she pointed out: “Nellie Forbush was one of the first feminist characters and she didn’t know it. She was just a little girl from Little Rock [who] winds up on an island in the Pacific, surrounded by servicemen. She meets a man with an accent she’s never heard before who offers her a brandy and a plantation.
As Nellie Forbush, Mitzi Gaynor was the love interest for the handsome and mysterious French planter Emile de Becque, played by the Italian actor Rossano Brazzi, whom she meets on a South Pacific island during the Second World War. Brazzi may have had strikingly handsome looks (“Sometimes my face is more beautiful than the leading lady’s”), but he claimed no singing voice, and his numbers like Some Enchanted Evening with which he wooed Nellie Forbush were overdubbed by Giorgio Tozzi; nevertheless, Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor (and Brazzi’s first wife) all became fast friends.
“He would walk around so in love with himself – ‘Mitzi Gahnor, I’m so gorgeous’ – could you imagine not having a good time with someone like that?”
South Pacific earned $17 million on its release in the US and became one of the highest-grossing films of the 1950s. “In England, they went absolutely mad for the picture,” according to Laurence Maslon in The South Pacific Companion. “It was the greatest money earner in the United Kingdom until Goldfinger.,
With fewer than 20 films to her name, Mitzi Gaynor’s cinema career was comparatively brief, and having partnered some of the great leading men of her time – “I never worked with a stinker – how great is that?” – in the early 1960s she turned to television.
Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber was born in Chicago on September 4 1931, her musician father being Hungarian and her mother a dancer of Austrian descent.
The family moved to Los Angeles where she attended Hollywood High School, learnt to dance and by the age of 12 was a member of the ballet corps in the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera.
At 14 she toured American army camps in a theatrical troupe, and having been spotted by a 20th Century Fox talent scout in a stage revival of The Great Waltz in Los Angeles, she signed a seven-year contract, changing her name after a Fox studio executive told her that Mitzi Gerber sounded like a delicatessen.
After making her uncredited film debut at 19 as a showgirl in My Blue Heaven (1950) starring Betty Grable, she caught the eye of the millionaire director-producer Howard Hughes, 27 years her senior, who proposed marriage. Although she turned him down, he lent her $25 to buy five acres on the Las Vegas strip which she later sold for $1.5 million
She proved adept in the property business all her life, buying homes and restaurants in Beverly Hills, as well as a two per cent stake in the Flamingo hotel, Las Vegas, where she subsequently starred in cabaret on $40,000 a week.
Her first starring role came in 1951 in Golden Girl with Dale Robertson. Under the headline “A Bright New Star Is Born”, the Daily Telegraph critic acclaimed her youth, fire and originality. Then came Bloodhounds of Broadway with Scott Brady, adapted from a Damon Runyon story, followed by There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954) with Dan Dailey and Marilyn Monroe, and Anything Goes with Bing Crosby.
Mitzi Gaynor received a call to audition for South Pacific while filming The Joker Is Wild (1956) with Frank Sinatra. Although the director, Charles Vidor, had planned to shoot her critical casino scene that day, Sinatra told her: “We’ll work around you – we’re going to get you this job.” She duly got the part and, after co-starring in Les Girls (1957) with Gene Kelly and Kay Kendall (chosen for the Royal Film Performance), she flew to Lumahai Beach on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i for the location shoot.
“The minute we got off the airplane,” she recalled, “off came the girdles and the stockings and on came the Muumuus [loose Hawaiian dresses]. And then the next day we suited up for shooting. Although South Pacific brought her to worldwide attention, it was criticised for lacklustre direction and her career stalled.
“After South Pacific I thought I was set – but that was the end of movie musicals,” she said. “Suddenly nobody wanted me. And frankly, I don’t think I was very good in movies. My features are nice but I’m not a great beauty. So many things look wrong and I see all my mistakes. I think I was better live, or on television. I’m better as a solo performer.”
Thereafter she made three middling comedies, Happy Anniversary (1959) with David Niven (“A really naughty boy”), the Shepperton production of Surprise Package (1960) with Yul Brynner and Noël Coward, and the rom-com For Love or Money (1963) with Kirk Douglas, which turned out to be her final Hollywood film.
In February 1964 she had top billing on The Ed Sullivan Show when The Beatles made their second American television appearance, signing autographs for a star-struck Paul McCartney.
Her role in South Pacific earned her a Golden Globe nomination. Always flamboyantly theatrical, she remained a trouper into her 80s, continuing to sing and dance – winning an Emmy for Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle! The Special Years – despite mishaps down the years. “I’ve broken all 10 toes, both ankles, my pelvis, and both knees are shot, but apart from that I’m fine,” she declared.
Under the headline “Ancient Hottie Selling Bev Hills Mansion”, a report in 2013 noted that she was disposing of her 1929 Spanish-style Hollywood hacienda (five beds, six baths, pool, 4,100 sq ft, yours for a cool $5.5 million), adding that “Mitzi is 82. The home is 84.”
In 1954 she married Jack Bean, who became her manager, producer and boss; they met on a blind date when she had already appeared in several films, but he claimed he had no idea who she was. He predeceased her in 2006.
Shortly after the wedding, she and Bean visited the El Morocco nightclub in New York at the invitation of Ethel Merman, her co-star in There’s No Business Like Show Business, to meet the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. When she danced with the diminutive duke, she recalled mischievously, “he fitted right into my boobs and started to hum I Get A Kick Out Of You. Bizarre
Sheree North was born in 1933 in Los Angeles. She made her film debut in “Excuse My Dust”. She shared the lead roles with Betty Grable in “How to be Very Very Popular” in 1955. She had a contract with 20th Century Fox and her other films included “The Way to the Gold” with Jeffrey Hunter and “In Love and Lar” with Hunter again and Robert Wagner, France Nuyen, Dana Wynter and Hope Lange. She seemed to disappear from movies for a number of years and came back in the late 60’s and developed into a terrific character actress and was featured in such films as “Madigan” in 1968, “Charlie Varrick” and The Organisation”. Sheree North died in 2005 at the age of 73.
Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:
Sheree North, who has died aged 72, was one of the last in a long line of Fox blondes stretching from Sonja Henie, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, June Haver to Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe.
In fact, North was originally hired by 20th Century-Fox with the intention of making her the next Monroe, whose height and measurements she almost matched exactly. “Even today,” she told an interviewer in 1983, “there’s still the same reaction when producers hear my name. They remember me as the blonde who was to have taken over from Marilyn Monroe.”
North went on to make seven films for Fox in the 50s, before managing to live down the Monroe comparison – inevitably always in Sheree’s disfavour – to have a long career as a respected actor in films and on television. In February 1954, the unknown 21-year-old dancer signed a contract with Fox when they were starting to have problems with the unreliable Monroe. The following year, North was featured on the cover of Life magazine when she got the lead in How To Be Very, Very Popular, a part which Monroe turned down.
Given Marilyn’s star status, she was probably right, but for the young North, it was a lively launch to her career. Paired with the 38-year-old Betty Grable (in her last screen role), North seemed even more fresh and energetic, particularly in a number Shake, Rattle and Roll, which was publicised as “the first rock’n’roll dance on the screen!”
Born Dawn Bethel in Los Angeles – her single mother was a seamstress – she was already dancing publicly at the age of 10. “I started dancing about the time I started to walk,” she recalled. Married at 15, she was dancing under the name of Shirley Mae Bessire at various clubs when she was seen by dance director Robert Alton, who cast her in the 1953 Broadway musical Hazel Flagg, based on William Wellman’s 1937 film Nothing Sacred. This in turn became a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis vehicle called Living It Up (1954), in which North reprised her show-stopping jitterbug routine.
After How to Be Very, Very Popular, North played the title role in The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956), again inviting comparisons with Monroe when cast opposite Tom Ewell, the hangdog actor who had fantasised about Marilyn in The Seven Year Itch, the previous year.
She displayed her dancing skills (her singing was dubbed) in two sizzling numbers in The Best Things In Life Are Free (1956) – The Black Bottom and The Birth of the Blues – in the latter being partnered by Jacques d’Amboise, principal dancer with George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet.
This was followed by three dramas meant to show off 20th Century-Fox’s young contract players. North was the waitress girlfriend of prospector Jeffrey Hunter (in a role originally meant for Elvis Presley, who wanted too much money) in The Way to the Gold (1957); alcoholic car salesman Tony Randall’s wife in No Down Payment (1957) and soldier Robert Wagner’s sweetheart in In Love and War (1958).
North’s Fox contract ended in 1958, but she returning to the big screen in a low-budget science fiction movie called Destination Inner Space (1966).
No longer the wide-eyed glamour girl, North turned in a vibrant performance in The Trouble With Girls (1969), one of Presley’s last films. The part of a smalltown single mother, dreaming of making it in show business, which allowed her a drunken tap-dance routine, began a series of world-wise, slightly tarnished women in meaty supporting roles. In Michael Winner’s Lawman (1971), she was sheriff Burt Lancaster’s former lover, a once beautiful woman, but now worn out by age and a hard life.
At the same time, she was becoming a regular in television series. In 1974, North appeared in the 100th episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and in the 80s, she appeared as Kramer’s mother Babs in Seinfeld.
She is survived by her fourth husband and two daughters from previous marriages.
· Sheree North, actor, born January 17 1933; died November 4 2005
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
TCM overview:
the platinum blond bombshell of 1950s musical motion pictures groomed as a studio glamour girl to substitute for the more famous but often unreliable Marilyn Monr , Sheree North was also a favorite of younger audiences for her continuing television roles as Lou Grant’s sultry girlfriend on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and Kramer’s mother Babs on “Seinfeld.”
Born Dawn Bethel in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, 1933, North danced as a youngster with USO shows during World War II. She later sanded floors and parked cars to pay for ballet lessons. After abandoning thoughts of becoming a ballerina, she opted for paying jobs in local nightclubs and the chorus line at the Greek Theatre. She made her film debut in the 1951 “Excuse My Dust” starring Red Skelton. But despite her first few films, she became so discouraged about launching a show business career that she considered going to secretarial school. North had to cross the country for her breakout role – a wild dance number in the Broadway musical “Hazel Flagg” she was given after an agent saw her dancing in a Santa Monica nightclub. The debut on the Great White Way earned her a Theatre World award and a chance to repeat her self-styled jitterbug in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis musical comedy film version of the stage show, retitled “Living It Up,” in 1954.
Unlike other studio-styled blonds such as Jayne Mansfield or Mamie Van Doren, North tried to change her bombshell image, allowing herself to age gracefully, work without makeup and segue into older character parts. She worked steadily, enjoying a half-century career on stage, television and in film. But she never quite shook the initial image as a beauty, which she blamed on studio-generated press coverage in the 1950s. When she appeared on the initial episode of “The Bing Crosby Show” on television that same year, she more than held her own with Crosby and Jack Benny, coming close to walking off with the show.
Hollywood insiders originally whispered that 20th Century Fox hired North only as a threat to the troublesome Monr – whom she did replace in the 1955 “How to Be Very, Very Popular,” in which she outdanced and outshone the leggy Betty Grable. North not only shared Monr ‘s blond coiffure but almost exactly matched her height and measurements. After that, her film credits quickly rose to leading lady status, as in the 1956 musical film “The Best Things in Life Are Free” opposite Gordon MacRae and Dan Dailey.
North appeared on stage in such popular musicals as “Can-Can,” “Irma La Douce” and “Bye Bye Birdie,” and in such plays as “Private Lives,” “The Madwoman of Chaillot” and “6 Rms Riv Vue.” Her film career also endured for several decades, including such films as “The Outfit” with Robert Duvall in 1973, “The Shootist” starring John Wayne in 1976 and the 1991 thriller “Defenseless” with Barbara Hershey and Sam Shepard.
The actress probably gained her widest recognition on television, beginning with early 1950s variety shows including Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town.” She went on to guest roles in such top series as “The Virginian,” “The Big Valley,” “The Fugitive,” “Cannon,” “McMillan and Wife,” “Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law,” “Kojak,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Golden Girls” and “Murder, She Wrote.” She earned Emmy nominations for appearances on “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “Archie Bunker’s Place.” North had a key role in the 1979 miniseries “Women in White” and played the uptight boss Edie McKendrick on Danny Thomas’ 1980-81 father-daughter sitcom “I’m a Big Girl Now.”
In 1974, North became a part of television history on the 100th episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” when Ed Asner’s character Lou Grant fell for her as Charlene Maguire, a saloon singer with a past. She inspired the crusty newsman Grant to start wearing mauve turtlenecks and zip around the office like, as one colleague said, “a 200-pound bumblebee.” North also has a memorable guest appearance on a pair of episode of “Archie Bunker’s Place,” where her character nearly tempts Archie Bunker into an affair. She found a new genration of fans when she played Kramer’s long-lost mother in a pair of “Seinfeld” episodes.
Later in her career, North’s connection to Monr was re-explored when she interviewed or cast in documentaries and shows about the iconic actress. Among them were the 1980 television movie “Marilyn: The Untold Story,” in which she played Monr ‘s mother; and the documentaries “Marilyn Monr : Beyond the Legend” in 1987 and “Intimate Portrait: Marilyn Monr ” in 1996. She also directed and produced several shows in small theaters, and in 2000 portrayed the Southern belle Amanda in a production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” at the Laguna Playhouse.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Tony Roberts was born in New York in 1939. After attending Northwestern University be made his Broadway debut in 1962 in “Something About A Soldier”. He is best known or his work in the films of Woody Allen including “Play It Again Sam”, “Annie Hall” and “Hannah and her Sisters”.
TCM Overview:
This tall, curly-haired son of longtime CBS radio announcer Ken Roberts debuted on Broadway in “Something About a Soldier” (1962). Twice-nominated for Tony Awards, Tony Roberts has had notable collaborations with Neil Simon (appearing in three Broadway productions, a film and a national tour) and Woody Allen (two plays and six films). Although Roberts’ stage credits have outnumbered his film appearances, he is perhaps best recalled for his work with Allen. He reprised his stage success as the businessman and best friend whose wife (Diane Keaton) Allen covets in “Play It Again, Sam” (1972). Roberts’ command of upwardly mobile mannerisms and affectations made him the perfect WASP foil to Allen’s nebbish persona as evidenced by the best-friend roles he played in such films as “Annie Hall” (1977), “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” (1982) and “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986).
Roberts has acted in other films, including Sidney Lumet’s “Serpico” (1973, again as an intimate of the title character), “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three” (1974, as a mayoral aide) and Lumet’s “Just Tell Me What You Want” (1980, as a gay film executive). As the star of “Amityville 3-D” (1983), Roberts turned in a solid performance that complemented the competence at all levels that kept that sequel from being trashy. He took a few days’ leave from the hit musical “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” (1990) to rush to L.A. to film his role as a nasty advertising executive in Blake Edwards’ “Switch” (1991).
Despite his frequent Broadway appearances, Roberts has rarely been the first choice, originating few musical roles like his Tony-nominated turn in the unsuccessful “How Now, Dow Jones” (1967). While he was the first to play the parts on stage, he inherited two well-known roles, both involving drag: Joe/Josephine, the role originated by Tony Curtis in Billy Wilder’s 1959 classic “Some Like It Hot”, in “Sugar” (1972), and Toddy, the gay mentor of a down and out singer, in Blake Edwards’ 1996 stage version of “Victor, Victoria”. Roberts has also appeared in non-musical roles, most notably in “Absurd Person Singular” (1974) and in the revival of “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1986). He also tried his hand at directing with the 1992 Off-Broadway staging of Charles Grodin’s comedy “One of the All-Time Greats”.
But whatever qualities that made him Woody Allen’s favorite WASP for a while never translated to the small screen. His featured work as Lee Pollack on “The Edge of Night” (1963-67) and his starring turns on the short-lived series “Rosetti and Son” (NBC, 1977), “The Four Seasons” (CBS, 1984), “The Lucie Arnaz Show” (CBS, 1985) and “The Thorns” (ABC, 1988) all failed to captivate the public. The nondescript actor persevered all the same, carving out his niche as a working actor. In the 90s, he teamed with his future “Victor, Victoria” co-star Julie Andrews in her TV-movie debut “Our Sons” (ABC, 1991) and also acted in the ABC movie “Not in My Family” (1993), “Arthur Miller’s American Clock” (TNT, 1993) and NBC’s “Perry Mason Mystery: The Case of the Jealous Jokester” (1995). He also provided voices for PBS documentaries “Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud” (1996) and “The Trial of Adolph Eichmann
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Tony Roberts
The Times obituary in 2025
Ruggedly handsome, broad-shouldered and suavely self-assured, Tony Roberts was perhaps everything Woody Allen would have liked to be.
Allen cast Roberts as his tall, confident wingman in no fewer than six of his films, including Annie Hall (1977) in which he portrayed Rob, a Hollywood actor and best friend and tennis partner of Allen’s Alvy Singer. In one memorable scene Allen’s character ranted about finding antisemites everywhere. “You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC and I said, ‘Did you eat yet?’ and [they] said, ‘No, Jew?’ Not, ‘Did you?,’ but ‘Jew eat? Jew?’ Not ‘Did you?,’ but ‘Jew eat?’ ”. To which Roberts’s character laconically replied, “You see conspiracies in everything.” The exchange seemed to sum up their relationship — the nervous, insecure Allen and his good-looking, urbane, nonchalant companion trying to keep his tortured friend’s neuroses in check
Best friends off-screen as well as on it, Roberts played similar types in other Allen films. In Stardust Memories (1980), he was a brash, street-smart actor who brought a Playboy model to a film festival while Allen played an angst-ridden move director. In A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), he was a jovial womanising bachelor who declares that “Marriage, for me, is the death of hope” and in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), he was the effortlessly cool sperm donor who gives Mia Farrow and her infertile husband twin boys. It was not lost on critics that Farrow and Allen, her partner at the time, had attempted to conceive a child together before adopting.
Christopher Isherwood noted that Allen created Roberts’s characters as a foil to “epitomise suave charm in contrast to his own hapless shrubbery”. Roberts himself was less certain about why they worked so well together. “I don’t know what chemistry we lucked upon,” he said. “Woody said people like our schmoozing.. If it was a case of opposites attract and Roberts fulfilled the role of a fantasy alter ego for Allen, then Roberts admitted that in turn there were times when he wished he were Allen.“I would like to have his gift and his genius and his brain. He’s as knowledgeable on most subjects as anyone I know whether you’re talking music or painting or history or politics. That’s a pleasure to be around. But I wouldn’t want his deeper neuroses,” he said of the friend he called “Max” after Allen had asked him not to use his real name in public.
His loyalty to Allen was evident in 2015 when he wrote Do You Know Me?, his autobiography. Several publishers told him they would publish the memoir if it included details about Allen’s personal life. Roberts refused and had the book published independently, forgoing the usual publisher’s advance.
At times when he was not working, he feared that his serial collaborations with Allen might have typecast him. “I was always so vividly the guy Woody wrote that everybody in the business would think of me that way,” he said in 1997. “The persona I was for Woody is a hard thing to break out of.”
The comment suggested a touch of his friend’s insecurity had rubbed off, for in reality, away from the films he made with Allen, he was a prolific actor on stage and screen. Asked if he ever took a vacation, he replied, “No, I crack under leisure.”
His memoir began with a stranger interrupting him one afternoon when he was sitting on a bench in Central Park before saying, “I’ve seen you in something, but I can’t place it. What have I seen you in?” If it was not one of the six films he made with Allen, it might have been in a range of other hit movies from Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973), in which he played alongside Al Pacino, to his lead role in Amityville 3-D as the tabloid journalist who buys the infamous haunted house — or in one of the two dozen plays in which he starred on Broadway.
Indeed, it was on the New York stage that Roberts first encountered Allen in 1966 when he auditioned for his play Don’t Drink the Water. It ran for nearly 600 performances over a year and a half, although Roberts claimed that in all that time they hardly exchanged “more than two sentences”.
They grew closer when Roberts appeared on Broadway again in Play It Again, Sam, written by and starring Allen. Roberts received a best actor Tony nomination for his performance and he and Allen reprised their roles in the 1972 movie version directed by Herbert Ross.
David Anthony Roberts was born in Manhattan in 1939, the son of Norma (née Finkelstein), an animator, and Ken Roberts, a radio announcer. His father claimed he knew his son was destined to be an actor when at the age of four he was transfixed by hearing Laurence Olivier in Shakespeare’s Henry V on the radio.
To show his son how a radio station operated, he started taking him to work with him. “We would sit in a room and I would watch grown-ups in suits and ties pretend to be cops, robbers, astronauts, politicians,” recalled Roberts. “They would act in front of a little piece of metal on a stand, but their bodies and their expressions were so invested in their story. It was like watching grown-ups behave like children. That is what did it for me.”
He went on to major in speech and theatre at Manhattan’s High School of Music & Art and at Northwestern University. He later married Jennifer Lyons, a former dancer, but the marriage ended in 1975; he is survived by their daughter, Nicole Burley.. After graduating he returned to New York and his breakthrough came fortuitously in the first Broadway run of Neil Simon’sBarefoot in the Parkas the back-up to the understudy to Robert Redford.
When Redford took a two-week vacation, the understudy promptly broke his ankle playing softball. “His break was my big break,” Roberts said. It was while filling in for Redford that Allen saw him and recruited him to appear in Don’t Drink the Water.
“We were friends and had identifiable repartee,” he said of their long collaboration. “The intimacy you saw was real.” There was also some gentle teasing. While making Annie Hall, Roberts returned to his dressing-room trailer to find he had been robbed. The first thing Allen wanted to know was had Roberts’s copy of the script been stolen..
About a week later, they found it in a garbage pail a mile away,” he recalled. “It was my pleasure to make him aware that the thieves thought the script was garbage.”
Tony Roberts, actor, was born on October 22, 1939. He died of lung cancer on February 7, 2025, aged 85
