Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert Alda (February 26, 1914 – May 3, 1986) was an American theatrical and film actor and father of actors Alan and Antony Alda. A singer and dancer, Alda was featured in a number of Broadway productions before moving to Italy during the early 1960s. He appeared in many European films over the next two decades, occasionally returning to the U.S. for film appearances such as The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1969). Alda, an American of Italian descent, was born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo in New York, New York, the son of Frances (née Tumillo) and Antonio D'Abruzzo, a barber born in Sant'Agata de' Goti, Benevento, Campania, Italy. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York in 1930. He began as a singer and dancer in vaudeville after winning a talent contest, and moved on to burlesque. Alda is known for portraying George Gershwin in the biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945) as well as the talent agent in the Douglas Sirk classic Imitation of Life (1959). He was very successful on Broadway, starring in Guys and Dolls (1950), for which he won a Tony Award, and in What Makes Sammy Run? (1964). He was also the host of the short-lived DuMont TV version of the game show What's Your Bid? (May–June 1953). Alda's first wife, and mother of actor Alan Alda, Joan Browne, was a homemaker and former beauty pageant winner. Alda was married to his second wife, Flora Marino, an Italian actress whom he met in Rome, until his death. Alda made two guest appearances with his son Alan on M*A*S*H, in the episodes "The Consultant" (January 1975) and "Lend a Hand" (February 1980). The latter episode also featured Antony Alda (1956–2009), his younger son by his second wife. Alda appeared in an episode of The Feather and Father Gang in 1977. Alda died on May 3, 1986, aged 72, after a long illness following a stroke.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Joan Leslie (born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel; January 26, 1925 – October 12, 2015) was an American actress, dancer, and vaudevillian who, during the Hollywood Golden Age, appeared in such films as High Sierra, Sergeant York, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel was born on January 26, 1925, in Highland Park, Michigan, the youngest child of John and Agnes Brodel. At 15, Leslie had her first significant role as the crippled girl in High Sierra (1941), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino. The same year she played in Sergeant York as York's fiancée. Leslie had a supporting role in The Male Animal (1942) as Olivia de Havilland's younger sister. In Yankee Doodle Dandy (also 1942) she portrayed George M. Cohan's girlfriend/wife. By now, Leslie had become a star whose on-screen image was described as "sweet innocence without seeming too sugary." Leslie was in four motion pictures released during 1943: The Hard Way, starring Ida Lupino and Dennis Morgan; The Sky's the Limit (1943), starring with Fred Astaire; the wartime film This Is the Army (1943) with Ronald Reagan; and finally Thank Your Lucky Stars. During World War II, she was a regular volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen, where she danced with servicemen and signed hundreds of autographs. She was featured with Robert Hutton, among many others, in the Warner Bros. film Hollywood Canteen (1944). In 1946 Leslie's career took a dive when she took Warner Brothers to court in order to get released from her contract based on moral and religious grounds because of the parts they kept giving her. She wanted more serious and mature roles. In 1947, the Catholic Theatre Guild gave Leslie an award because of her "consistent refusal to use her talents and art in film productions of objectionable character." As a result of this, Jack Warner used his influence to blacklist her from other major Hollywood studios. From this point on Leslie had a more irregular film career. In 1947, she signed a two-picture contract with the poverty row studio Eagle-Lion Films. The first one was Repeat Performance (1947), a film noir. The other was Northwest Stampede (1948) in which she performed with James Craig. In 1952, she signed a short-term deal with Republic Pictures. One of the films she made for Republic was Flight Nurse (1953). Her last film was The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956). However, she continued making sporadic appearances in television shows while her children were at school. She retired from acting in 1991, after appearing in the TV film Fire in the Dark. Leslie died on October 12, 2015, in Los Angeles, California. She was 90. Her survivors include her two children and one sister, Betty. On October 8, 1960, Joan Leslie received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street. In 1999, she was one of the 250 actresses nominated for the American Film Institute's selection of the 25 greatest female screen legends to have debuted before 1950. On August 12, 2006, she received a Golden Boot Award for her contributions to Western television shows and movies.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Alexis Smith (June 8, 1921 – June 9, 1993) was a Canadian-born stage, film, and television actress. She appeared in several major Hollywood movies in the 1940s and had a notable career on Broadway in the 1970s, winning a Tony Award in 1972.
Charles Douville Coburn (June 19, 1877 – August 30, 1961) was an American film and theatre actor. Best known for his work in comedies, Coburn received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for 1943's The More the Merrier. Coburn was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Scotch-Irish Americans Emma Louise Sprigman (May 11, 1838 Springfield, Ohio – November 12, 1896 Savannah, Georgia) and Moses Douville Coburn (April 27, 1834 Savannah, Georgia – December 27, 1902 Savannah, Georgia). Growing up in Savannah, he started out at age 14 doing odd jobs at the local Savannah Theater, handing out programs, ushering, or being the doorman. By age 17 or 18, he was the theater manager. He later became an actor, making his debut on Broadway in 1901. Coburn formed an acting company with actress Ivah Wills in 1905. They married in 1906. In addition to managing the company, the couple performed frequently on Broadway. After his wife's death in 1937, Coburn relocated to Los Angeles, California and began film work. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a retired millionaire playing Cupid in The More the Merrier in 1943. He was also nominated for The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941 and The Green Years in 1946. Other notable film credits include Of Human Hearts (1938), The Lady Eve (1941), Kings Row (1942), The Constant Nymph (1943), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Wilson (1944), Impact (1949), The Paradine Case (1947), Everybody Does It (1950), Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952), Monkey Business (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and John Paul Jones (1959). He usually played comedic parts, but Kings Row and Wilson were dramatic parts, showing his versatility. For his contributions to motion pictures, in 1960, Coburn was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6268 Hollywood Boulevard. Description above from the Wikipedia article Charles Coburn, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia Julie Bishop (August 30, 1914 – August 30, 2001) was an American film and television actress. She appeared in over 80 films between 1923 and 1957. Bishop was born Jacqueline Wells and used her birth name professionally through 1941. She also appeared on stage (and in one film) as Diane Duval. She was a child actress, beginning her career in 1923. Early on, she appeared in several Laurel and Hardy films (Any Old Port! and The Bohemian Girl), and she settled on the name by which she is best remembered when offered a contract by Warner Bros. on the condition that she change her name, which was associated with her almost exclusively B-movie appearances through 1941 (amounting to nearly 50 films over 17 years). She chose the name because it matched the monograms on her luggage (she had for a time been married to Walter Booth Brooks III, a writer). She made 16 films at Warners, including a supporting role in 1943's Princess O'Rourke, supporting Olivia de Havilland and Robert Cummings. While filming, she met her second husband, Clarence Shoop, a pilot. She was Humphrey Bogart's leading lady in Action in the North Atlantic (1943), played Ira Gershwin's wife in the biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945), and closed out her Warners years in 1946's Cinderella Jones. In 1949, Bishop played a down-on-her-luck wife and mother in the Sands of Iwo Jima, opposite John Wayne. She was among several former Wayne co-stars (including Laraine Day, Ann Doran, Jan Sterling, and Claire Trevor) who joined the actor in 1954's aviation drama, The High and the Mighty. Thrice married, Bishop had a son, Steve, a physician and pilot, and a daughter, actress Pamela Susan Shoop, both by her second marriage, Gen. Clarence A. Shoop, a test pilot who flew for Howard Hughes and later became vice president of Hughes Aircraft; they were married from 1944 until his death in 1968. Her first marriage ended in divorce and her third with her death. Julie Bishop died of pneumonia on her 87th birthday, August 30, 2001, in Mendocino, California.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Morris Carnovsky (September 5, 1897 – September 1, 1992) was an American stage and film actor born in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked briefly in the Yiddish theatre before attending Washington University in St. Louis. Opting for a mainstream acting career, he appeared in dozens of Broadway shows. Description above from the Wikipedia article Morris Carnovsky, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Rosemary DeCamp was an American radio, film, and television actress. DeCamp first came to fame in November 1937, when she took the role of Judy Price, the secretary/nurse of Dr. Christian in the long-running radio series of the same name. She also played in The Career of Alice Blair, a transcribed syndicated soap opera that ran in 1939–1940. She made her film debut in Cheers for Miss Bishop and appeared in many Warner Bros. films, including Eyes in the Night, Yankee Doodle Dandy playing Nellie Cohan opposite James Cagney, This Is The Army playing the wife of George Murphy and the mother of Ronald Reagan, Rhapsody in Blue, and Nora Prentiss. She played the mother of the character played by Sabu Dastagir in Jungle Book. In 1951 and 1953, respectively, she starred in the nostalgic musical films On Moonlight Bay and its sequel, By The Light Of The Silvery Moon, as Alice Winfield, Doris Day's mother, opposite Leon Ames. DeCamp played Peg Riley in the first television version of The Life of Riley opposite Jackie Gleason in the 1949–1950 season, then reprised the role on radio with original star William Bendix for an episode of Lux Radio Theater in 1950. From 1955–1959, she was a regular on the popular NBC television comedy The Bob Cummings Show, playing Margaret MacDonald, widowed sister of Cummings's character, the lothario photographer and former World War II pilot Bob Collins. Dwayne Hickman (future star of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) portrayed her son, Chuck. She appeared in the 1961 Rawhide episode, "Incident Near Gloomy River". In 1962, she played a dishonest Southern belle in the NBC sitcom Ensign O'Toole with Dean Jones. She appeared in the role of Gertrude Komack on ABC's medical drama Breaking Point in the episode entitled "A Little Anger is a Good Thing". DeCamp had a recurring role as Helen Marie, the mother of Marlo Thomas's character on the ABC sitcom That Girl from 1966–1970. She appeared in several 1968 episodes of the CBS sitcom Petticoat Junction as Kate Bradley's sister, Helen, filling in as a temporary replacement for the ailing Bea Benaderet as the mother figure to Bradley's three daughters. DeCamp made several appearances as the mother of Shirley Partridge in The Partridge Family from 1970–1973. She also played The Fairy Godmother in the 1980s TV show, The Memoirs of a Fairy Godmother. DeCamp played Buck Rogers' mother in flashback scenes of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode "The Guardians". On July 7, 1946, her Beverly Hills home was damaged when struck by a wing after the experimental XF-11 piloted by Howard Hughes (re-created in the 2004 movie, The Aviator) crashed nearby. Although a piece of the wing and a part of the neighbor's roof landed in DeCamp's bedroom (where she and her husband were sleeping) they sustained no injuries.
Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906 – August 14, 1972) was an American pianist, composer, author, comedian, and actor. He was more famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on the radio and in movies and television, than for his music.
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1938
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Al Jolson (May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer".He was born in the Russian Empire (the part of which is now in Lithuania) and emigrated to America at the age of five with his Jewish parents. His performing style was brash and extroverted, and he popularized a large number of songs that benefited from his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach". Numerous well-known singers were influenced by his music, including Bing Crosby Judy Garland, rock and country entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bob Dylan, who once referred to him as "somebody whose life I can feel". Broadway critic Gilbert Seldes compared him to "the Great God Pan," claiming that Jolson represented "the concentration of our national health and gaiety." In the 1930s, he was America's most famous and highest paid entertainer. Between 1911 and 1928, Jolson had nine sell-out Winter Garden shows in a row, more than 80 hit records, and 16 national and international tours. Although he's best remembered today as the star in the first (full length) talking movie, The Jazz Singer in 1927, he later starred in a series of successful musical films throughout the 1930s. After a period of inactivity, his stardom returned with the 1946 Oscar-winning biographical film, The Jolson Story. Larry Parks played Jolson with the songs dubbed in with Jolson’s real voice. A sequel, Jolson Sings Again, was released in 1949, and was nominated for three Oscars. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jolson became the first star to entertain troops overseas during World War II, and again in 1950 became the first star to perform for G.I.s in Korea, doing 42 shows in 16 days. He died just weeks after returning to the U.S., partly due to the physical exertion of performing. Defense Secretary George Marshall afterward awarded the Medal of Merit to Jolson's family. He enjoyed performing in blackface makeup – a theatrical convention since the mid-19th century. With his unique and dynamic style of singing black music, like jazz and blues, he was later credited with single-handedly introducing African-American music to white audiences. As early as 1911 he became known for fighting against anti-black discrimination on Broadway. Jolson's well-known theatrics and his promotion of equality on Broadway helped pave the way for many black performers, playwrights, and songwriters, including Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and Ethel Waters. Description above from the Wikipedia article Al Jolson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Born Eassy White in New York City (other sources claim his birth name as "George Weitz" and his birthplace as Toronto, Canada; he performed under all three names), White started his career as part of a dance team with partner Benny Ryan, performing in the burlesque circuit. He appeared in supporting roles in many Broadway shows, but it was his appearance in Florenz Ziegfeld's Ziegfeld Follies that would provide the impetus for his own career as a theatrical impresario on Broadway. White appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911 and 1915; in the latter show, he popularized the Turkey Trot dance. He launched his Ziegfeld Follies imitation, the George White's Scandals, in 1919. Scandals provided audiences with popular songs, comic sketches, eccentric dancers and his own version of the Ziegfeld girls. Though not as grand as the Ziegfeld Follies, his Scandals were quite successful. The shows, which were micromanaged by White and reflected his tastes, were fast-paced and featured a lot of dancing. White reached the apogee of his Broadway career with the 1926 edition of Scandals, which ran for 424 performances. The Black Bottom, danced by Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola, touched off a national dance craze. However, by the time he produced his last staging of Scandals in 1939, the show was derided by critics as being old-fashioned. In addition to his Scandals and George White's Music Hall Varieties (essentially Scandals under a different name), White also produced several book musicals and legitimate plays on Broadway. White also was a movie director, producer and screenwriter. He produced the movies Flying HIgh (1931), George White's Scandals (1934) George White's 1935 Scandals (1935) and George White's Scandals (1945), and directed the 1934 and 1935 celluloid versions of his Scandals. He also appeared in and took screenwriting credit for the 1934 and 1935 pictures. he also received screenwriting credits for the movies Ziegfeld Follies (1945) and Duffy's Tavern (1945). In 1946, White was involved in a hit-and-run automobile accident in which two people died. He was sentenced to nine months in prison. Freed from jail, White tried to turn Scandals into a show that would tour the nightclub circuit. The venture failed and he went bankrupt. His attempt to open a nightclub in Las Vegas also failed. White died aged 77 from leukemia in 1968 in Hollywood, California and was interred in Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood. [Wikipedia]
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1955
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Darryl Hickman (July 28, 1931 - May 21, 2024) emerged as a prominent American actor whose career transitioned from childhood stardom to adult roles. Starting in the industry at a young age, he showcased his talent in notable films like "The Grapes of Wrath" and "The Human Comedy." Hickman's versatility allowed him to navigate between acting and later, directing, contributing to television shows such as "The Wonderful World of Disney" and "Gunsmoke." His passion for the craft extended to writing, publishing insightful books on the entertainment business and being an acting coach. Hickman's enduring career spanned decades, marking him not only as a seasoned performer but also as a multifaceted contributor to the entertainment world.
Charles Halton was an American stage, screen, and television character actor.
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1941
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1946
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1943
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1943
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1944
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1954
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1947
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1941
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1948
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1946
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1942
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1943
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1943
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. William Henry "Will" Wright (March 26, 1894, San Francisco, California - June 19, 1962, Los Angeles, California) was an American character actor. He was frequently cast in westerns and in curmudgeonly roles. Over the course of his career, Wright appeared in more than 200 film and television roles. He started his acting career in vaudeville and later moved to the stage, then on to movies, radio, and television. Among the films in which Wright appeared are Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), The Major and the Minor (1943), So Proudly We Hail! (1943), Road to Utopia (1946), Mother Wore Tights (1947), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), Little Women (1949), Walk Softly, Stranger (1950), Sunset in the West (1950), People Will Talk (1951), The Happy Time (1952), River of No Return (1954), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Jeanne Eagels (1957), and Gunman's Walk (1958). One of his most famous and memorable film roles was corrupt city official Dolph Pillsbury in the Academy Award-winning All the King's Men (1949). Wright provided the voice of Friend Owl in Walt Disney's animated film Bambi (1942). He guest starred on several television series. Will Wright died of cancer in 1962.
Gower Carlyle Champion (June 22, 1919 – August 25, 1980) was an American actor, theatre director, choreographer, and dancer. Champion was born on June 22, 1919, in Geneva, Illinois, as the son of John W. Champion and Beatrice Carlisle. He was raised in Los Angeles, California, where he graduated from Fairfax High School. He studied dance from an early age and, at the age of fifteen, toured nightclubs with friend Jeanne Tyler billed as "Gower and Jeanne, America's Youngest Dance Team". In 1939, "Gower and Jeanne" danced to the music of Larry Clinton and his Orchestra in a Warner Brothers & Vitaphone film short-subject, "The Dipsy Doodler" (released in 1940).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Mark Stevens (December 13, 1916 – September 15, 1994) was an American actor. Description above from the Wikipedia article Mark Stevens (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Joe Gilbert was an American actor who starred in hundreds of movies and shows but in largely uncredited roles.
