Served with the Navy in the South Pacific toward the end of World War II. Then, quietly and without publicity or fanfare, compiled one of the most distinguished peacetime military careers of anyone in his profession. In 1961, as his weekly TV series Hennesey (1959) was enhancing naval recruiting efforts, accepted a commission as a line officer in the Naval Reserve with duties in recruitment, training films, and public relations. Holder of a multi-engine pilot license, he later co-piloted jet planes for the Navy, which made him an Honorary Aviator authorized to wear wings of gold-at the time only the third so honored in naval aviation history. By 1976 he had attained the rank of captain, and was in uniform aboard the carrier USS Constellation for the Bicentennial celebration on July 4. In 1980, the Navy proposed a period of active duty at the Pentagon that would have resulted in a promotion to rear admiral, bringing him even with Air Force Reserve Brigadier General James Stewart. Fresh on the heels of a second directing Emmy, he felt his absence would impact achieving a long-held goal of directing motion pictures, and reluctantly declined. (The opportunity in films never materialized.) Holds Letters of Commendation from six secretaries of the Navy. Was honorary chairman of the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation and a charter member of VIVA, the effort to return POW-MIAs from Vietnam. Upon retirement in 1982, he was decorated with the Legion of Merit by Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr.. Other than Stewart, no performer in his industry has achieved a higher uniformed rank in the U.S. military. (Glenn Ford was also a Naval Reserve captain, and director and Captain John Ford was awarded honorary flag rank upon his 1951 retirement from the Naval Reserve).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Edward Vincent "Eddie" Bracken was an American actor. Bracken became a Hollywood comedy legend with lead performances in the films Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek both in 1944, both of which have been preserved by the National Film Registry. During this era, he also had success on Broadway, with performances in plays like Too Many Girls. Bracken's later movie roles include National Lampoon's Vacation, Oscar, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and Rookie of the Year. Description above from the Wikipedia article Eddie Bracken, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Fred Niblo (January 6, 1874 – November 11, 1948) was an American pioneer film actor, director and producer. Niblo was born Frederick Liedtke (several sources give "Frederico Nobile", apparently erroneously) in York, Nebraska, to a French mother and a father who had served as a captain in the American Civil War and was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg. Using the stage name, Fred Niblo, Liedtke began his show business career performing in vaudeville and in live theater. After more than twenty years doing live performing as a monologist, during which he traveled extensively around the globe, he worked in Australia from 1912 through 1915, where he turned to the burgeoning motion picture industry and made his first two films.
As a Hollywood director, he is most remembered for several notable films beginning with his 1920 work The Mark of Zorro which starred Douglas Fairbanks. The following year he teamed up with Fairbanks again in The Three Musketeers and then directed Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand.
In 1924, Niblo directed the film Thy Name Is Woman. In 1925, Niblo was the principal director of the epic Ben-Hur that was one of the most expensive films of the day but became the third highest-grossing silent film in cinema history. Niblo followed up on this success with two major 1926 works, The Temptress starring Greta Garbo in her second film in America, and Norma Talmadge in Camille. Niblo went on to direct some of the greatest stars of the era including Joan Crawford, Lillian Gish, and Ronald Colman. In 1930 he directed his first talkie with two of the biggest names in show business, John Gilbert and Renée Adorée in a film titled Redemption.
Fred Niblo retired in 1933 after more than forty years in show business. The last sixteen years were used to make more than forty films, most of which were feature length projects. He was an important personality in the early years of Hollywood and was one of the original founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In recognition of his role in the development of the film industry, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7014 Hollywood Boulevard on February 8, 1960. His Ben-Hur film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Fred Niblo died in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery near his wife Enid Bennett in Glendale, California. His son with Josephine Cohan, Fred Niblo, Jr. (1903–1973) was a successful Hollywood screenwriter.
Hedda Hopper (May 2, 1885 – February 1, 1966) was an American actress and gossip columnist, notorious for feuding with her arch-rival Louella Parsons. She had been a moderately successful actress of stage and screen for years before being offered the chance to write the column Hedda Hopper's Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times in 1938. At the height of her power in the 1940s she commanded a 35 million strong readership. She was well known for her political conservatism, and during the McCarthy era she named suspected communists. Hopper continued to write gossip until the end, her work appearing in many magazines and later on radio.
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Moroni Olsen (June 27, 1889 – November 22, 1954) was an American actor.
Olsen was born in Ogden, Utah, to Mormon parents Edward Arenholt Olsen and Martha Hoverholst, who named him after the Moroni found in the Book of Mormon. Some sources have claimed that Olsen's birth name was John Willard Clawson, but there appears to be no support for this claim.
Olsen studied at Weber Stake Academy, the predecessor of Weber State University. He then went to study at the University of Utah, where one of his teachers was Maud May Babcock. During World War I, he sold war bonds for the United States Navy. He also studied and performed in the Eastern United States around this time.
In 1923, Olsen organized the "Moroni Olsen Players" out of Ogden. They performed at both Ogden's Orpheum Theatre and at various other locations spread from Salt Lake City to Seattle.
After having worked on Broadway, he made his film debut in a 1935 adaptation of The Three Musketeers. He later played a different role in a 1939 comedy version of the story, starring Don Ameche as D'Artagnan and the Ritz Brothers as three dimwitted lackeys who are forced to substitute for the musketeers, who have drunk themselves into a stupor.
His most famous role was the voice of the Slave in The Magic Mirror in Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Olsen also provided the voice of the senior angel in It's a Wonderful Life.
Olsen was an active member of the LDS Church, being a teacher of youth in the Hoolwood Ward. He also was director of the Pilgramage Play of Hollywood for several years.
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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.
Lucien Lovell Littlefield (August 16, 1895 – June 4, 1960) was an American actor from the silent film era. Brother of 'Ralph Littlefield. He later made numerous cameo appearances on television series. He died of natural causes in 4 June 1960 (Hollywood, California, USA), and was buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.
Etta McDaniel was born on December 1, 1890 in Wichita, Kansas, USA. She was an actress, known for Son of Dracula (1943), The Great Man's Lady (1942) and Johnny Doughboy (1942). She died on January 13, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Sister of players Hattie McDaniel and Sam McDaniel.
Arlington Rand Brooks Jr. (September 21, 1918 – September 1, 2003) was an American film and television actor.
Brooks was born in Wright City, Missouri. He was the son of Arlington Rand Brooks, a farmer. His mother and he moved to Los Angeles when he was four, though he continued to spend summers in Wright City. Brooks continued to make visits to his hometown of Wright City into the 1950s, up to and following the death of his father in 1950. His mother and his grandfather were actors.
After leaving school, Brooks got a screen test at MGM and was given a bit part in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). His big fame came with his part as Charles Hamilton in Gone with the Wind (1939), a role which he later admitted he despised; he wanted to play more macho parts. He made $100 per week under contract at MGM, but when he was on loan to Selznick International Pictures for Gone with the Wind, he made $500 per week.
After Gone With the Wind, he had relatively small parts in other movies including Babes in Arms, then a regular role as Lucky in the Hopalong Cassidy series of Westerns in the mid-1940s; Brooks succeeded Russell Hayden in the role. Among the films, which starred William Boyd as Hopalong, were Hoppy's Holiday, The Dead Don't Dream, and Borrowed Trouble. He received positive notice for his work in Fool's Gold, with Variety reporting that he did "an excellent job." In edited, half-hour versions of some of the films, he appeared in 12 of the 52 episodes of the Hopalong Cassidy television series.
In 1948, he co-starred with Adele Jergens and Marilyn Monroe in the low-budget, black-and-white Columbia Pictures film, Ladies of the Chorus. Brooks became the first actor to share an on-screen kiss with Monroe, who in a few years was one of the world's biggest movie stars. Filmed in just 10 days, the film was released soon after its completion. Variety called his performance in the 1952 film The Steel Fist "capable."
Television brought new opportunities, again often in Westerns. He played Cpl. Randy Boone in the 1950s television series, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Brooks had guest roles in 1950s Western series, including Mackenzie's Raiders, The Lone Ranger, Maverick, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza. He appeared twice on the syndicated adventure series, Rescue 8, as well as on CBS's Perry Mason courtroom drama series.
In 1962, he directed and produced a movie about brave dogs, Bearheart, but the film was entangled in legal troubles due to his business manager's involvement in crimes such as forgery and graft. The film was finally released in 1978, under the title Legend of the Northwest.
After he left show business, Brooks ran a private ambulance company in Glendale, California. He commented that he "died in more pictures than almost anyone" and that though he was never very big in show business, he was willing to return to it. Brooks sold the ambulance company in 1994, and retired to his ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, where he bred champion Andalusian horses. He attended a Gone with the Wind reunion for Clark Gable's birthday, along with Ann Rutherford and Fred Crane, in Cadiz, Ohio, in 1992.
On September 1, 2003, Brooks died in Santa Ynez, California.
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Thurston Hall (May 10, 1882 – February 20, 1958) was an American film actor. He appeared in 250 films between 1915 and 1957 and is probably best remembered for his portrayal, during the later stages of his career, of often pompous or blustering authority figures.
Hall's best-known television role was as Mr. Schuyler, the boss of Cosmo Topper (played by Leo G. Carroll), in the 1950s television series, Topper (1953–1956).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Thurston Hall, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Edith Evanson (née Carlson; April 29, 1896 – November 29, 1980) was an American actress of film, character and television during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
She was born in Tacoma, Washington, where her father was a Protestant church clergyman (a religion to which she adhered throughout her life). Her first job was as a court reporter in Bellingham.
On March 15, 1923, she married Morris Otto Evanson (1893-1975). The couple had no children
Her first film role came in The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1940) in an uncredited role. In the 1940s she was in supporting roles mostly as a maid, a busybody, landladies, or middle-aged secretaries. Some of her other film roles include parts in Citizen Kane (1941), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Woman of the Year (1942), Reunion in France (1942), The Strange Woman (1947), I Remember Mama (1948), Rope (1948), The Damned Don't Cry (1950), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Disney's Toby Tyler (1960). During her time in Hollywood, she co-starred opposite some of its greatest legends, including Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Orson Welles, Joan Crawford, Michael Rennie, Glenn Ford, Patricia Neal, James Stewart, Irene Dunne, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, and Hedy Lamarr.
With the coming of television in the late 1940s she expanded in her career appearing on such shows as You Are There, The Loretta Young Show, Chevron Hall of Stars, Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre, The Millionaire, Zane Grey Theater, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Frank Sinatra Show, Bachelor Father, Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond, and Lassie.
Following her retirement, she lived in Riverside, California, until her death from heart failure on November 29, 1980. Her ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.
Born in 1880, ‘Broncho Billy’ Anderson is considered the first western film star. He played three film roles in “The Great Train Robbery” and then began to write, direct and act in his own films. After co-founding the Essanay Studios in 1907 with George Kirk Spoor, Anderson appeared in some 300 short films. But it was his 148 western shorts playing cowboy Bronco Billy that made him a star.
He retired for the first time in 1916 but made a few comebacks, including producing movies into the 1950s for his company, Progressive Pictures. He received an honorary Oscar in 1958 as a “motion picture pioneer.” Anderson came out of retirement one more time for a cameo in 1965’s “The Bounty Hunter.” He died at age of 90 1971.
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Hessy Doris Lloyd (3 July 1896 – 21 May 1968) was an English-American film, television and stage actress.
Born in Liverpool, she went to the United States of America to visit a sister already living there. What was supposed to be a visit she made permanent. She spent several years (1916–25) appearing in Broadway theatre plays, notably a number of Ziegfeld Follies editions, and probably spent some time on the road in touring companies. She decided on a film career, making her first film in 1925. With the exception of returning to one Broadway play in 1947, her career was devoted to films and television.
Lloyd appeared in over 150 films between 1925 and 1967, including the 1933 low-budget Monogram Pictures version of Oliver Twist, in which she played Nancy. Irving Pichel starred as Fagin and Dickie Moore as Oliver. Her roles ranged from the sinister Russian spy Mrs. Travers in the biopic Disraeli (1929) to the meek housekeeper Mrs. Watchett in The Time Machine (1960).
Her most famous film roles were in the Tarzan films starring Johnny Weissmuller. She voiced one of the roses in Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951), later making small appearances in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music which both starred Julie Andrews.