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Wendy Barrie (18 April 1912 – 2 February 1978) was a British actress who worked in British and American films.
Barrie was born in London to English parents. Her father, Francis Charles John Graigoe Jenkin KC (1883 – 1936), was an employee of Great Western (according to the 1901 census), who then joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1902. Her mother was Ellen McDonagh. Hollywood gave her a more exotic parentage with her father being a King's Counsel and her mother a Russian-Jewish actress who had performed in the world's first professional Yiddish-language theater troupe. She received her education at a convent school in England and a finishing school in Switzerland.
In 1932, Barrie made her screen debut in the film Threads, which was based upon a play. She went on to make a number of motion pictures for London Films under the Korda brothers, Alexander and Zoltan, the best known of which is 1933's The Private Life of Henry VIII, in which she portrayed Jane Seymour.
In 1934, she appeared in Freedom of the Seas and was contracted by Fox Film Corporation for a film directed by Scott Darling that was made in Britain. The following year, she moved to the United States and made her first Hollywood film for Fox opposite Spencer Tracy in the romantic comedy It's a Small World, followed by Under Your Spell with Lawrence Tibbett. Loaned to MGM, Barrie starred opposite James Stewart in the 1936 film Speed. In 1939 she starred with Richard Greene and Basil Rathbone in the 20th Century Fox version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and with Lucille Ball in RKO's Five Came Back. During 1939 and the early 1940s, Barrie made several of The Saint and The Falcon mystery films with George Sanders. She made her final motion picture in 1954.
With the dawn of television, in the late 1940s, Barrie turned to roles in that medium.
In 1956, she had a disc jockey program, the Wendy Barrie Show, on WMGM in New York City. She also hosted a widely syndicated radio interview show into the mid-1960s.
After appearances in more than 15 films in Britain and more than 30 in Hollywood, Barrie's contribution to the industry was recognized with a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street, near the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Her star was dedicated February 8, 1960.
Barrie became a naturalized American citizen in 1942. She was reportedly engaged to and had a daughter named Carolyn with the infamous gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and at one time was married to textile manufacturer David L. Meyer.
She died in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1978, aged 65, following a stroke that had left her debilitated for several years. She was buried in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
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Gregory Ratoff (20 April 1897 — 14 December 1960) was a Russian-born American film director, actor and producer. His most famous role as an actor was as producer Max Fabian who feuds with star Margo Channing (Bette Davis) in All About Eve (1950).
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Jed Prouty (April 6, 1879 – May 10, 1956) was an American film actor. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Prouty was a vaudeville performer before becoming a film actor. Mostly appearing in comedies, he occasionally performed a serious character role, for instance a small part as an oily publicist in A Star is Born (1937).
Gregory Gaye was born on October 10, 1900 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire as Gregory De Gay. He was an actor, known for Ninotchka (1939), Dodsworth (1936) and Tovarich (1937). He died on August 23, 1993 in Studio City, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Pierre Frank Watkin (December 29, 1889 – February 3, 1960) was an American character actor in many films, serials, and television series from the 1930s through the 1950s, especially westerns. He is perhaps best remembered for being the father of Eleanor Twitchell, the lady who captures Lou Gehrig's heart in Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Watkin was born in Sioux City, Iowa. In the 1920s, he had his own theatrical troupe, the Pierre Watkin Players. In 1927, the group moved its headquarters from Sioux Falls to Lincoln, Nebraska.
Watkin portrayed Perry White in both of the Superman serials of the late 1940s, which starred Kirk Alyn as the title character and Noel Neill as Lois Lane.
Watkin played a few different characters in the television series Adventures of Superman, in which John Hamilton played Perry White. He was set to reprise his role as the editor of The Daily Planet in a revival of the series in 1959, as Hamilton had died in the interim since the cancellation of the original series. However, series star George Reeves also died in the summer of 1959, and those plans ended. Watkin himself died six months later.
He also cast in 1955 in the episode "Joey and the Gypsies" of the NBC children's western series Fury. Watkin guest starred in the CBS western series Brave Eagle. He was cast twice each on the ABC/Warner Brothers series, Cheyenne (as Harvey Sinclair in "The Law Man") and Annie Oakley (as the Reverend Mills in the 1956 episode "The Reckless Press"). In 1958, Watkin portrayed Dr. Breen of Samaritan Hospital in the episode "San Francisco Story" of Rex Allen's syndicated western series, Frontier Doctor.
During the first season of CBS's Perry Mason from 1957 to 1958, Watkin appeared in three episodes as Judge Keetley. He was also cast during the 1950s on The Range Rider, Tales of the Texas Rangers, in three episodes of the western aviation adventure series Sky King, and five times on The Jack Benny Program.
Watkin played the part of Colonel Duncan in the 1958 episode "Decoy" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series Colt .45.
Ann Gillis was born Alma Mabel Conner on February 12, 1927, in Little Rock, Arkansas. At age seven, she appeared in her first film, Men in White (1934), as an extra. During the next two years, she had uncredited appearances in six more films until she received her first major role in King of Hockey (1936). Warner Brothers Studios gave significant screen time to Gillis in this movie, in hopes that she would become another Shirley Temple. Although (like all child stars of the 1930s) she never achieved Temple's level of fame, for the next several years Gillis starred in many films, almost always playing a spoiled, bratty character. She had two rare sympathetic roles as Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and as the title character in Little Orphan Annie (1938). One scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer called for her to go into screaming hysterics when her character was trapped in a cave of bats, and Gillis delivered in a powerful performance that is probably the most memorable scene of her film career. As Gillis grew older, however, her career slowed down, and she left Hollywood in 1947. When she left Hollywood she married Paul Ziebold and had 2 sons. She then divorced, relocated to New York City and married Richard Fraser, a Scottish-born actor (they had a son born in 1958). During the 1950s and '60s, Gillis made sporadic television appearances, and in 1959, she hosted a national telecast presentation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Gillis and her husband moved to England in 1961, and they were living in London when they heard of a casting call for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) that called for an American actress living in the city. Gillis auditioned and got the role; it remains her final film to date. Ann moved to Belgium in 1972 where she met and married Belgian René Van Hulst (deceased 1999). She lived in Belgium from 1972 to 2014 and became a Belgian citizen, devoting much of her time to painting and music, she was an accomplished pianist and harpist. She moved to England, UK in December 2014 and passed away peacefully on 31/1/2018.
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Lynn Bari (born Margaret Schuyler Fisher, December 18, 1913 – November 20, 1989) was a film actress who specialized in playing sultry, statuesque man-killers in roughly 150 20th Century Fox films from the early 1930s through the 1940s.
Bari was one of 14 young women "launched on the trail of film stardom" August 6, 1935, when they each received a six-month contract with 20th Century Fox after spending 18 months in the company's training school. The contracts included a studio option for renewal for as long as seven years.
In most of her early films, Bari had uncredited parts usually playing receptionists or chorus girls. She struggled to find starring roles in films, but accepted any work she could get. Rare leading roles included China Girl (1942), Hello, Frisco, Hello (1943), and The Spiritualist (1948). In B movies, Lynn was usually cast as a villainess, notably Shock and Nocturne (both 1946). An exception was The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944). During WWII, according to a survey taken of GIs, Bari was the second-most popular pinup girl after the much better-known Betty Grable.
Bari's film career fizzled out in the early 1950s as she was approaching her 40th birthday, although she continued to work at a more limited pace over the next two decades, now playing matronly characters rather than temptresses. She portrayed the mother of a suicidal teenager in a 1951 drama, On the Loose, plus a number of supporting parts.
Bari's last film appearance was as the mother of rebellious teenager Patty McCormack in The Young Runaways (1968) and her final TV appearances were in episodes of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. and The FBI.
She quickly took up the rising medium of television during the '50s, which began when she starred in the live television sitcom Detective's Wife, which ran during the summer of 1950, and in Boss Lady
In 1955, Bari appeared in the episode "The Beautiful Miss X" of Rod Cameron's syndicated crime drama City Detective. In 1960, she played female bandit Belle Starr in the debut episode "Perilous Passage" of the NBC western series Overland Trail starring William Bendix and Doug McClure and with fellow guest star Robert J. Wilke as Cole Younger.
From July–September 1952, Bari starred in her own situation comedy, Boss Lady, a summer replacement for NBC's Fireside Theater. She portrayed Gwen F. Allen, the beautiful top executive of a construction firm. Not the least of her troubles in the role was being able to hire a general manager who did not fall in love with her.
Commenting on her "other woman" roles, Bari once said, "I seem to be a woman always with a gun in her purse. I'm terrified of guns. I go from one set to the other shooting people and stealing husbands!"
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Olivia Joyce Compton (January 27, 1907 – October 13, 1997) was an American actress. Compton was born in Lexington, Kentucky. (Despite frequent reports to the contrary, her name was not originally "Eleanor Hunt"; she had appeared in the film Good Sport (1931) with Hunt and this confusion in an early press article followed Compton throughout her career.) After graduating high school she spent two years studying at the University of Tulsa, studying dramatics, art, music and dancing. She won a personality and beauty contest and spent two months in a film studio as an extra.
Compton first made a name for herself when she was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926, alongside Mary Brian, Dolores Costello, Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray. Compton appeared in a long string of mostly B-movies from the 1920s through the 1950s. She was a comedy actress and protested at being stereotyped as a "dumb blonde".
Among her over two hundred films were Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, The Awful Truth, Mildred Pierce, and The Best Years of Our Lives.
A devout Christian, on her gravestone, just beneath her dates of birth and death, is written "Christian Actress". She died from natural causes, aged 90, and was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.
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Creighton Hale (24 May 1888 — 9 August 1965) was an Irish-American theatre, film, and television actor whose career extended more than a half-century, from the early 1900s to the end of the 1950s.
Born Patrick Fitzgerald in County Cork, Ireland, he was educated in Dublin and London, and later attended Ardingly College in Sussex. He immigrated to America in his early twenties, traveling with a troupe of actors. While starring in Charles Frohman's Broadway production of Indian Summer, Hale was spotted by a representative of the Pathe Film Company. He eventually became known professionally as Creighton Hale, although the derivation of those names remains unknown. His first movie was The Exploits of Elaine in 1914. He starred in hit films such as Way Down East, Orphans of the Storm, and The Cat and the Canary.
When talkies came about, his career declined. He made several appearances in Hal Roach's Our Gang series (School's Out, Big Ears, Free Wheeling), and also played unbilled bits in major talking films such as Larceny, Inc., The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca.
He died in the Los Angeles County city of South Pasadena and was buried at Duncans Mills Cemetery in Northern California.
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Jack Mulhall, born John Joseph Francis Mulhall, (October 7, 1887 in Wappingers Falls, New York – June 1, 1979 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California) was a movie actor since the silent film era and appeared in over 430 films. Reputedly, he was one of a number of male models(Fredric March & Reed Howes were two others) for the Arrow Collar Man in the Arrow collar ads illustrated by J. C. Leyendecker for the Cluett Peabody shirt company. Died from congestive heart failure.
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Gino Corrado (born Gino Corrado Liserani; 9 February 1893 - 23 December 1982) was an Italian-born American screen actor, his career spanning the years 1916 to 1954. During the early years of his career he was extensively credited as Eugene Corey.
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Edmund Mortimer (21 August 1874 – 21 May 1944) was an American actor and film director. He appeared in 251 films between 1913 and 1945. He also directed 23 films between 1918 and 1928. He was born in New York, New York and died in Los Angeles, California.
Edward Gargan was born of Irish parents in Brooklyn, New York in 1902. He was the elder brother of actor William Gargan whose July 17 birthday he shared.
Edward Gargan started as a musical comedy actor on Broadway. He sang in "Good News", "Rose-Marie", and other hit musicals of the 1920s, and also in opera. One of his early shows was "Polly of Hollywood" in 1927. He portrayed Patrolman Mulligan, one of the principals of "Strictly Dishonorable", in 1930.
He went to Hollywood in 1932 and the next year was in the cast of the film "David Harum". For the next 19 years he appeared in a variety of movies. Gargan was one of the most prolific bit players in the history of the movies, specializing in dumb policemen and dense sidekicks. He appeared in nearly 300 feature films over a three-decade span between 1921 and 1952, and television work from 1951 to 1953.
Gargan died in New York City in 1964.
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Nora Cecil (September 20, 1878 – May 1, 1951) was a British-American character actress whose 30-year career spanned both the silent and sound film eras. Cecil's career began on the stage, where she appeared in a single Broadway production, The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast, which ran for more than 240 performances at the Broadway Theatre in 1901-02. (A 1930 newspaper article says that Cecil "made her debut, three decades ago, on the London stage.")
Cecil appeared in well over 100 feature films and film shorts.
In 1915, she moved from the stage into films, her first appearance being in a starring role in The Arrival of Perpetua, directed by Émile Chautard. She often played "thin-lipped, stern-visaged dowagers and forbidding mothers-in-law" and "welfare workers, landladies, schoolmistresses and maiden aunts".
One of the most significant roles was in the W.C. Fields vehicle, The Old Fashioned Way in 1934. Some of the other notable films in which Cecil appeared include: Ernst Lubitsch's historical romance, The Merry Widow, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald; the 1939 version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, starring Mickey Rooney; the John Ford classic, Stagecoach, with John Wayne.
Her final acting performance was in a featured role in Mourning Becomes Electra in 1947, starring Rosalind Russell.
Harry Harvey Sr. was an American actor of theatre, film, and television.
Harvey appeared in minstrel shows, in vaudeville, and on the Broadway stage but is best remembered as a character actor who appeared in more than three hundred films and episodes of television series.
He had roles in the films The Oregon Trail, Old Overland Trail, Wyoming Renegades, Ride Beyond Vengeance, and many other westerns.
In the 1950s, Harvey was cast in The Roy Rogers Show, Man Without a Gun and The Lone Ranger. In 1962, he appeared on It's a Man's World. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, he guest-starred on Branded, Lassie, Hazel, The Wild Wild West, Mannix, Alias Smith and Jones, Bonanza, and Columbo. His last appearance was in an episode of Adam-12-
Muriel Evans (born Muriel Adele Evanson; July 20, 1910 – October 26, 2000) was an American film actress. She is best known for her many appearances in popular westerns of the 1930s for which she won a Golden Boot Award.
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