Unscrupulous agent Rush Blake makes singing waiter Buddy Clayton a big radio star while Peggy Cornell, who has lost her own radio show, helps Buddy.
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Pat O’Brien (born William Joseph Patrick O'Brien) was an American stage, screen, radio, and television actor. He was a star during the first several years of his film career, the height of his popularity being during the 1930s and 1940s.
Richard Ewing "Dick" Powell (November 14, 1904 – January 2, 1963) was an American singer, actor, producer, director and studio boss. Born in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in northern Arkansas, Powell attended the former Little Rock College in the state capital, before he started his entertainment career as a singer with the Charlie Davis Orchestra, based in the midwest. He recorded a number of records with Davis and on his own, for the Vocalion label in the late 1920s. Powell moved to Pittsburgh, where he found great local success as the Master of Ceremonies at the Enright Theater and the Stanley Theater. In April 1930, Warner Bros. bought up Brunswick Records which at that time owned Vocalion. Warner Bros. was sufficiently impressed by Powell's singing and stage presence to offer him a film contract in 1932. He made his film debut as a singing bandleader in Blessed Event. He went on to star as a boyish crooner in movie musicals such as 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, Flirtation Walk, and On the Avenue, often appearing opposite Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell. Powell desperately wanted to expand his range but Warner Bros. wouldn't allow him to do so, although they did (mis)cast him in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) as Lysander. This was to be Powell's only Shakespearean role and one he did not want to play, feeling that he was completely wrong for the part. Finally, reaching his forties and knowing that his young romantic leading man days were behind him he lobbied to play the lead in Double Indemnity. He lost out to Fred MacMurray, another Hollywood nice guy. MacMurray’s success, however, fueled Powell’s resolve to pursue projects with greater range and in 1944, he was cast in the first of a series of films noir, as private detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, directed by Edward Dmytryk. The film was a big hit and Powell had successfully reinvented himself as a dramatic actor. The following year Dmytryk and Powell re-teamed to make Cornered, a gripping, post-WWII thriller that helped define the film noir style. He became a popular "tough guy" lead appearing in movies such as Johnny O'Clock and Cry Danger. But 1948 saw him step out of the brutish type when he starred in Pitfall, a film noir that sees a bored insurance company worker fall for an innocent but dangerous femme fatale, played by Lizabeth Scott. Even when he appeared in lighter fare such as The Reformer and the Redhead and Susan Slept Here (1954) he never sang in his later roles. The latter, his final onscreen appearance in a feature film, did include a dance number with costar Debbie Reynolds. From 1949-1953, Powell played the lead role in the National Broadcasting Company radio theater production Richard Diamond, Private Detective. His character in the 30-minute weekly was a likable private detective with a quick wit. When Richard Diamond came to television in 1957, the lead role was portrayed by David Janssen.
Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the twentieth century. During her long career, she made a total of 73 films and is noted for her role as Fred Astaire's partner in a series of ten musical films. She achieved great success in a variety of film roles and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Kitty Foyle. After winning a 1925 Charleston dance contest that launched a successful vaudeville career, she gained recognition as a Broadway actress for her stage debut in Girl Crazy. This led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film role as a supporting actress in 42nd Street. In the 1930s, Rogers' nine films with Fred Astaire gave RKO Pictures some of its biggest successes, most notably Top Hat and Swing Time. But after two commercial failures with Astaire, she branched out into dramatic and comedy films. Her acting was well received by critics and audiences, and she became one of the biggest box-office draws and highest paid actresses of the 1940s. Her performance in Kitty Foyle won her the Oscar for Best Actress. Rogers' popularity peaked by the end of the decade. She reunited with Astaire in 1949 in the commercially successful The Barkleys of Broadway. After an unsuccessful period in the 1950s, she returned to Broadway in 1965, playing the lead role in Hello, Dolly!. More Broadway roles followed, along with her stage directorial debut in 1985 of an off-Broadway production of Babes in Arms. She also made television acting appearances until 1987. In 1992, Rogers was recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors. She died of a heart attack in 1995, at age 83. Rogers is associated with the phrase "backwards and in high heels", which is attributed to Bob Thaves' Frank and Ernest 1982 cartoon with the caption "Sure he [Astaire] was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did...backwards and in high heels". This phrase is sometimes incorrectly attributed to Ann Richards, who used it in her keynote address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention. A Republican and a devout Christian Scientist, Rogers married five times with all of them ending in divorce, and having no children. During her long career, Rogers made 73 films, and her musical films with Astaire are credited with revolutionizing the genre. Rogers was a major movie star during the "Golden Age" of Hollywood and is often considered an American icon. She ranks number 14 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of female stars of classic American cinema. Her autobiography Ginger: My Story was published in 1991.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Allen Jenkins (April 9, 1900 – July 20, 1974) was an American character actor on stage, screen and television. He was born Alfred McGonegal on Staten Island, New York. He studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In his first stage appearance, he danced next to James Cagney in a chorus line for an off-Broadway musical called Pitter-Patter. He made five dollars a week. He also appeared one thousand times in Broadway plays between 1924 and 1962, including The Front Page with Lee Tracy (1928). His big break came when he replaced Spencer Tracy for three weeks in the Broadway play The Last Mile. He was called to Hollywood by Darryl F. Zanuck and signed first to Paramount Pictures and shortly afterwards to Warner Bros. He originated the character of Frankie Wells in the Broadway production of Blessed Event and reprised the role in the film adaptation, both in 1932. With the advent of talking pictures, he made a career out of playing comic henchmen, stooges, policemen and other "tough guys" in numerous films of the 1930s and 1940s, especially for Warner Bros. He was labeled the "greatest scene-stealer of the 1930s" by the New York Times. He voiced the character of "Officer Dibble" on the Hanna-Barbera television cartoon Top Cat and was a regular on the 1956-1957 television situation comedy Hey, Jeannie! (1956), starring Jeannie Carson. He was also a guest star on The Red Skelton Show, I Love Lucy, Playhouse 90, The Ernie Kovacs Show, Zane Grey Theater, and The Sid Caesar Show. Eleven days before his death he made his final appearance, at the end of Billy Wilder's 1974 film adaptation of The Front Page. He went public with his alcoholism and was the first actor to speak in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate about it. He helped start the first Alcoholics Anonymous programs in California prisons for women. Jenkins, James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Frank McHugh were the original members of the so-called "Irish Mafia". He was the seventh member of the Screen Actors Guild. Description above from the Wikipedia article Allen Jenkins, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Grant Mitchell (born John Grant Mitchell Jr.) was an American stage and screen actor. He is best remembered for his portrayals of fathers, husbands, bank clerks, businessmen, school principals and similar type characters, usually supporting, in films of the 1930s and 1940s. Mitchell, a Yale post graduate at Harvard Law, gave up his law practice to become an actor, making his stage debut at age 27. He appeared in lead roles on Broadway in such plays as "It Pays to Advertise", "The Champion", "The Whole Town's Talking", and "The Baby Cyclone", the last which was specially written for him by George M. Cohan. His screen career took off with the advent of sound (years earlier he had appeared in at least two silent films). He appeared primarily in B films, though from time to time enjoyed being a part of A-quality productions such as Dinner at Eight (1933), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). Grant Mitchell retired from show business in 1948. He died, age 82, in Los Angeles in 1957.
Henry O'Neill (1891–1961) was an American film actor known for playing gray-haired fathers, lawyers, and similarly roles during the 1930s and 1940s. O'Neill began his acting career on the stage, after dropping out of college to join a traveling theatre company. He served in the military in World War I, then returned to the stage. In the early 1930s he began appearing in films, including The Big Shakedown, Santa Fe Trail, Anchors Aweigh, The Green Years, and The Reckless Moment. His last film was The Wings of Eagles. Henry O'Neill died in 1961 at the age of 69.
Charles Lane (born Charles Gerstle Levison; January 26, 1905 – July 9, 2007) was an American character actor and centenarian whose career spanned 77 years. Lane gave his last performance at the age of 101 as a narrator in 2006. Lane appeared in many Frank Capra films, including You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Riding High (1950). He was a favored supporting actor of Lucille Ball, who often used him as a no-nonsense authority figure and comedic foe of her scatterbrained TV character on her TV series I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour and The Lucy Show. His first film of more than 250 was as a hotel clerk in Smart Money (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jean Rogers, born Eleanor Dorothy Lovegren, was an American actress who starred in serial films in the 1930s and low–budget feature films in the 1940s as a leading lady. She is best remembered for playing Dale Arden in the science fiction serials Flash Gordon and Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars. She graduated from Belmont High School, and had hoped to study art, but in 1933, she won a beauty contest sponsored by Paramount Pictures that led to her career in Hollywood. Rogers starred in several serials for Universal between 1935 and 1938, including Ace Drummond and Flash Gordon. Rogers was one of seven women chosen out of 2,700 passengers on excursion boats and ferries who were interviewed for roles in Eight Girls in a Boat. The group began work in Hollywood on September 3, 1933. By 1937, Rogers was the only one of the seven featured as an actress. Rogers was assigned the role of Dale Arden in the first two Flash Gordon serials. Buster Crabbe and Rogers were cast as the hero and heroine in the first serial, Flash Gordon, and Rogers' beauty, long blonde hair, and revealing costumes endeared her to moviegoers. The evil ruler Ming the Merciless lusted after her, and Gordon was forced to rescue her from one situation after another. While filming the series in 1937, her costume caught fire and she suffered burns on her hands. Co-star Crabbe smothered the fire by wrapping a blanket on her. In the first serial, Arden competed with Princess Aura for Gordon's attention. Rogers' character was fragile, small-chested, diminutive, and totally dependent on Gordon for her survival; Lawson's Princess Aura was domineering, independent, voluptuous, conniving, sly, ambitious, and determined to make Gordon her own. The competition for Gordon's attention is one of the highlights of the film. In Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, the second serial, Rogers sported a totally different look. She had dark hair and wore the same modest costume in each episode. Rogers matured after the first serial, and no sexual overtones are seen in Trip to Mars. Rogers told writer Richard Lamparski that she was not eager to do the second serial and asked her studio to excuse her from the third. Despite starring in serial films, Rogers felt she was not going to improve her career unless she could participate in feature films. She discovered that it was more tedious working in feature films. She played John Wayne's leading lady in the 1936 full-length motion picture Conflict and co-starred with Boris Karloff in the horror film Night Key the following year. During the 1940s, Rogers appeared solely in feature films, including The Man Who Wouldn't Talk with Lloyd Nolan, Viva Cisco Kid with Cesar Romero as the Cisco Kid, Design for Scandal with Rosalind Russell and Walter Pidgeon, Whistling in Brooklyn with Red Skelton, A Stranger in Town with Frank Morgan, Backlash, and Speed to Spare with Richard Arlen. Still, she was unhappy with the studios, possibly because she was relegated to B-movie productions on a lower salary. She decided to freelance with companies such as 20th Century Fox and MGM. Her last appearance was in a supporting role in the suspense film The Second Woman, made in 1950 by United Artists. She died in Sherman Oaks in 1991 at the age of 74 following surgery. She was later cremated and her ashes returned to her family.
