A musical television special chronicling the early career of playwright George M. Cohan, focusing primarily on his vaudeville years as part of his family singing group "The Four Cohans."
05-11-1957
1h 30m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Sidney Lumet
Writers:
Sam Spewack, Bella Spewack
Key Crew
Producer:
Sidney Lumet
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Mickey Rooney
Unknown Character
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule Jr.; September 23, 1920 – April 6, 2014) was an American actor, vaudevillian, comedian, producer, and radio personality. In a career spanning nine decades and continuing until shortly before his death, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last surviving stars of the silent film era.
At the height of a career that was marked by declines and comebacks, Rooney performed the role of Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films in the 1930s and 1940s that epitomized American family values. A versatile performer, he became a celebrated character actor later in his career. Laurence Olivier once said he considered Rooney "the best there has ever been". Clarence Brown, who directed him in two of his earliest dramatic roles, National Velvet and The Human Comedy, said he was "the closest thing to a genius I ever worked with".
Rooney first performed in vaudeville as a child and made his film debut at the age of six. At 14, he played Puck in the play and later the 1935 film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Critic David Thomson hailed his performance as "one of the cinema's most arresting pieces of magic". In 1938, he co-starred in Boys Town. At 19, he was the first teenager to be nominated for an Oscar for his leading role in Babes in Arms, and he was awarded a special Academy Juvenile Award in 1939. At the peak of his career between the ages of 15 and 25, he made 43 films, which made him one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most consistently successful actors and a favorite of MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer.
Rooney was the top box-office attraction from 1939 to 1941 and one of the best-paid actors of that era, but his career would never again rise to such heights. Drafted into the Army during World War II, he served nearly two years entertaining over two million troops on stage and radio and was awarded a Bronze Star for performing in combat zones. Returning from the war in 1945, he was too old for juvenile roles but too short to be an adult movie star, and was unable to get as many starring roles. Nevertheless, Rooney's popularity was renewed with well-received supporting roles in films such as Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and The Black Stallion (1979). In the early 1980s, he returned to Broadway in Sugar Babies and again became a celebrated star. Rooney made hundreds of appearances on TV, including dramas, variety programs, and talk shows, and won an Emmy in 1982 plus a Golden Globe for his role in Bill (1981).
James Dunn worked on the stage, in vaudeville and as an extra in silent movies before he was signed by Fox in 1931. His first movie with Fox was 1931's Sob Sister (1931). While at Fox, he appeared with Shirley Temple in her first three features: Baby Take a Bow (1934), Stand Up and Cheer! (1934) and Bright Eyes (1934). Dunn's screen character was usually the boy next door or the nice guy. In 1935 musicals at the new 20th Century-Fox were out and Dunn would move to the "B" list, from which he would never return. In The Payoff (1935) he plays the nice guy newspaper columnist whose wife ruins his career. By the late 1930s he was drinking heavily and become unemployable. He would appear in small roles in films during the early 1940s, but those parts were few. In 1945 he was able to make a comeback and win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), but his rejuvenated career would not continue. By 1951 he would again be unemployed and bankrupt. Television would later supply some work and he would be a regular on the series It's a Great Life (1954).
Dunn was born 2 November 1901, New York City, New York, USA, and he died 1 September 1967, Santa Monica, California, USA (following abdominal surgery)
Gloria Mildred DeHaven (born July 23, 1925) is an American actress, singer and a former contract star for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
DeHaven was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actor-director, Carter DeHaven, and actress, Flora Parker DeHaven, both former vaudeville performers.
She began her career as a child actor with a bit part in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936). She was signed to a contract with MGM. Despite featured roles in such films as Best Foot Forward, The Thin Man Goes Home (1944) and Summer Stock (1950), and being voted by exhibitors as the third most likely to be a "star of tomorrow'" in 1944, she did not achieve film stardom. She portrayed her own mother, Flora Parker DeHaven, in the Fred Astaire film Three Little Words (1950).
DeHaven also appeared as a regular in the television series and soap operas As the World Turns, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Ryan's Hope. She was one of the numerous celebrities enticed to appear in the all-star box office flop, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), and has guest starred in such television series as Robert Montgomery Presents, Appointment with Adventure (episode entitled "The Snow People"), The Guy Mitchell Show, Johnny Ringo (as Rosemary Blake in "Love Affair"), The Rifleman, Wagon Train, The Lloyd Bridges Show, Marcus Welby, M.D., Gunsmoke, Mannix, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, The Love Boat, Mama's Family, Highway to Heaven, Murder, She Wrote and Touched by an Angel. She was also on five episodes of Match Game 75 along with Patti Deutsch and Buck Owens as guest panelists.
Gloria DeHaven died July 30, 2016 (age 91), in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
From Wikipedia.
June Havoc (born Ellen June Evangeline Hovick), was a Canadian American actress, dancer, writer, and stage director.
Havoc was a child vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother Rose Thompson Hovick. She later acted on Broadway and in Hollywood, and stage-directed, both on and off-Broadway. She last appeared on television in 1990 in a story arc on the soap opera General Hospital. Her elder sister Louise gravitated to burlesque and became the well-known striptease performer Gypsy Rose Lee.
Following their parents' divorce, the two sisters earned the family's income by appearing in vaudeville, where June's talent often overshadowed Louise's. Baby June got an audition with Alexander Pantages, who had come to Seattle, Washington in 1902 to build theaters up and down the west coast of the United States. Soon, she was launched in vaudeville and also appeared in Hollywood movies. She could not speak until the age of three, but the films were all silent. She would cry for the cameras when her mother told her that the family's dog had died.
In December 1928, Havoc, in an effort to escape her overbearing mother, eloped with Bobby Reed, a boy in the vaudeville act. Weeks later after performing at the Jayhawk Theatre in Topeka, Kansas, Rose reported Reed to the Topeka Police, and he was arrested. Rose had a concealed gun on her when she met Bobby at the police station. She pulled the trigger, but the safety was on. She then physically attacked her soon-to-be new son-in-law, and the police had to pry her off the hapless Reed. June soon married him, leaving both her family and the act. The marriage did not last, but the two remained on friendly terms. June's only child was a daughter, born April Rose Hyde. A marriage license, dated November 30, 1928 for Ellen Hovick and Weldon Hyde, would seem to indicate that Bobby Reed's real name was Weldon Hyde. April became an actress in the 1950s known as April Kent. She predeceased her mother, dying in Paris in 1998.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Eddie Foy Jr. (February 4, 1905 - July 15, 1983) was an American character actor.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Eddie Foy Jr., licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Robert Ellenstein was an American actor. The son of Meyer C. Ellenstein, a Newark dentist, Robert Ellenstein grew up to see his father become a two-term mayor from 1933 to 1941. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II: earning a Purple Heart during his service.