Maureen Paula O'Sullivan was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, on May 17, 1911. The future mother of Mia Farrow was a schooldays classmate of Vivien Leigh at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton in London. Even as a schoolgirl, Maureen desired an acting career; she studied hard and read widely. When the opportunity to be an actress came along, it almost dropped in her lap. The director Frank Borzage was in Dublin filming “Song o’ My Heart” (1930) when Maureen, then 18, met him. Borzage suggested a screen test, which she took. The results were more than favorable, as she won the part of Eileen O’Brien. The part was a substantial one, so much so that Maureen went on to Hollywood to complete the filming. Once in sunny California, Maureen wasted no time landing roles in other films such as “Just Imagine” (1930), “Princess and the Plumber” (1930), and “So This Is London” (1930). Maureen was on a roll that her contemporaries could only have wished for when they were coming up through the ranks. In 1932, Maureen was teamed up with Olympic medal winner Johnny Weissmuller for the first time in “Tarzan the Ape Man” (1932). Five other Tarzan films followed, the last being “Tarzan’s New York Adventure” (1942). The Tarzan epics rank as one of the most memorable series ever made. Most people agree that those movies would not have been successful had it not been for the fine acting talents, not to mention beauty, of Maureen O’Sullivan. But she was more than Jane Parker in the Tarzan films; she had great roles and played beautifully in films such as “The Flame Within” (1935), “David Copperfield” (1935), and “Anna Karenina” (1935). She turned in yet another fine performance in “Pride and Prejudice” (1940). After the 1940s, Maureen made far fewer films, not because she lost popularity but by choice. It isn’t always easy to walk away from a lucrative career, but she did because she wanted to devote more time to her husband, John Farrow, an Australian writer, and their seven children. The couple were married from 1936 until his death in 1963. She did not, however, retire completely; Maureen still found time to make an occasional appearance in films or TV or on the stage. Later movie-goers remember her as Elizabeth Alvorg in the hit film “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986). Her final silver screen appearance was in “The River Pirates” (1988). Some TV movies followed, but only until 1996. She maintained homes in New Hampshire and Arizona, and it was in Scottsdale that Maureen died on June 23, 1998, of a heart attack. She was 87 years old.
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Rodney Marvin "Rod" McKuen (April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015) was an American singer-songwriter, musician and poet. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music. He earned two Academy Award nominations and one Pulitzer nomination for his music compositions. McKuen's translations and adaptations of the songs of Jacques Brel were instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world. His poetry deals with themes of love, the natural world and spirituality. McKuen's songs sold over 100 million recordings worldwide, and 60 million books of his poetry were sold as well, according to the Associated Press.
Troy Donahue (born Merle Johnson Jr., January 27, 1936 – September 2, 2001) was an American film and television actor and singer. He was a popular sex symbol in the 1950s and 1960s.
His father was Merle Johnson, the manager of the motion-picture department of General Motors. His mother, Edith Johnson, was a retired stage actress. Donahue attended a New York military academy, where he met Francis Ford Coppola. When Donahue was 18, he moved to New York and got a job as a messenger in a film company founded by his father. He was fired, he says, because he was too young to join the union. He attended Columbia University and studied journalism. He trained briefly with Ezra Stone, and then moved to Hollywood.
The big break of Donahue's career came when he was cast opposite Sandra Dee in A Summer Place, made by Warner Bros. in 1959. The director was Delmer Daves. Warner signed him to a long-term contract. They put him to work guest-starring in episodes of their Western TV series, such as Colt .45 (1959), Maverick (1959), Sugarfoot (1959), The Alaskans (1960), and Lawman (1960).
In 1968, Donahue signed a long-term contract with Universal Studios for films and TV. This lasted a year and saw him get four roles: guest shots on Ironside (1968), The Name of the Game (1968), and The Virginian (1969), and an appearance in the TV movie The Lonely Profession (1969).
Donahue declared bankruptcy in 1968 and eventually lost his home. In 1969, Donahue moved from Los Angeles to New York City. By this time, Donahue's drug addiction and alcoholism had ruined him financially. In May 1982, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, which he credited for helping him achieve and maintain sobriety.
Donahue continued to act in films throughout the 1980s and into the late 1990s. Donahue's final film role was in the 2000 comedy film The Boys Behind the Desk, directed by Sally Kirkland.
On August 30, 2001, Donahue suffered a heart attack and was admitted to Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica. He died three days later, on September 2, at the age of 65.
Daughter of French-born Robert Perreau-Saussine and Eleanor Child Perreau-Saussine, she was born Ghislaine Elizabeth Marie Thérèse Perreau-Saussine. Perreau achieved success as a child actress in a number of films. She got into the business quite by accident. Her older brother Gerald was trying out for the part of the title character's son in Madame Curie. Because their mother could not find a babysitter, she took Gigi along. The two-year-old, who could speak French, got the (uncredited) part of Madame Curie's daughter Ève (while Gerald would have to wait a year to make his film debut in Passage to Marseille).
She also played the daughter of Claude Rains and Bette Davis's characters in the 1944 film Mr. Skeffington. In Shadow on the Wall, she starred as the sole witness to a murder. As the "top child movie actress for 1951", the then ten-year-old was given the keys to the city of Pittsburgh by its mayor, and later Pennsylvania governor, David L. Lawrence. She was the youngest person to be so honored. Perreau played the rebellious teen daughter of Fredric March in 1956's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. However, her film career lost momentum as she became an adult, so she turned to television.
In 1959, she played a friend of Shelley Fabares on The Donna Reed Show, and had a supporting role in the sitcom The Betty Hutton Show, with her brother Gerald. In 1960, Perreau and Robert Harland performed as Sara Lou and Lin Proctor, a young couple from the east who have eloped and are heading west, in the western series Stagecoach West with Wayne Rogers and Robert Bray. Also in 1960, Perreau was cast as Julie Staunton in an episode of The Islanders, set in the South Pacific. She was cast in "Don Gringo" and "The Promise", as well as in The Rebel. In 1961, she played Mary Bettelheim in an episode of The Roaring 20s. She was cast in a recurring role on Follow the Sun series from 1961–1962 as secretary, Katherine Ann "Kathy" Richards. She guest starred on The Rifleman in 1960 and 1961. She made guest appearances on Perry Mason. In 1964, she also co-starred as Lucy, a beleaguered homesteader, on an episode of Gunsmoke. In 1970, she appeared on The Brady Bunch as a math teacher who becomes the object of puppy love by Greg Brady, one of her students.
In the 2000s, she provided her voice in the animated films Fly Me to the Moon, A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures and Crash: The Animated Movie, and acted in Time Again.
Gary Gray was a child and juvenile actor from the 1940s to the 1960s. Some of his movies include: Rachel & the Stranger, The Painted Hills, and Return of the Bad Men. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 69.
Jeanette Nolan (December 30, 1911 – June 5, 1998) was an American actress. Nominated for four Emmy Awards, she had roles in the television series The Virginian (1962–1971) and Dirty Sally (1974), and in films such as Macbeth (1948).
Nolan began her prolific acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, and, while a student at Los Angeles City College, made her radio debut in 1932 in Omar Khayyam, the first transcontinental broadcast from station KHJ. She continued acting into the 1990s.
Nolan made more than three hundred television appearances, including the religion anthology series, Crossroads and as Dr. Marion in the 1956 episode "The Healer" in Brian Keith's CBS Cold War series, Crusader. She appeared on Rod Cameron's syndicated series, State Trooper. Nolan was cast as Emmy Zecker in the 1959 episode "Johnny Yuma" of the ABC western series, The Rebel, starring Nick Adams. She appeared in two episodes of David Janssen's crime drama, Richard Diamond, Private Detective. She starred as Maggie Bowers in the Peter Gunn episode "Love Me to Death" in 1959. She played Sadie Grimes in Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode titled "The Right Kind of House" which first aired March 9, 1958 and Mrs.Edith in "Coming Home" June 13, 1961.
Nolan graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in her native Los Angeles, California.
In 1935, Nolan married actor John McIntire; the couple remained together until his death in 1991. Nolan and McIntire had two children together, actors Holly and Tim.
Nolan and McIntire worked together several times from the late 1960s on, sometimes as voice actors. They appeared in a 1969 KCET television reading of Norman Corwin's 1938 radio play The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, with McIntire as the Devil and Nolan as Lucrezia Borgia.
In 1977, they appeared in Disney's twenty-third animated film The Rescuers, in which McIntire voiced the cat Rufus and Nolan the muskrat Ellie Mae. Four years later, the couple worked on the 24th Disney film, The Fox and the Hound, with McIntire as the voice of Mr. Digger, an ill-tempered badger, and Nolan as the original voice of Widow Tweed, the old kindly widow who takes in Tod after his mother was killed by an off-screen hunter.
They guest-starred on screen together, often portraying a married couple, as in an episode of The Love Boat in 1978, Charlie's Angels in 1979, The Incredible Hulk in 1980, Goliath Awaits in 1981, Quincy, M.E. in 1983, and Night Court in 1985, playing Dan Fielding's hick Louisianan parents.
Nolan died of a stroke in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on June 5, 1998. She was buried in Eureka, Montana's Tobacco Valley Cemetery.
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Paul Birch (born January 13, 1912, Atmore, Alabama – died May 24, 1969, St. George's, Grenada) was an American actor of stage and film.
Birch was born Paul Smith in Atmore, Alabama. He was a veteran of 39 movies, 50 stage dramas and a number of television shows including the Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951). In the late 1950s he starred, along with William Campbell, in the syndicated Canadian series Cannonball (1958), a half-hour drama/adventure show about truckers. He was the original "Marlboro Man" in TV commercials and played both Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee in several historical plays.
He started out as the first of the original members of the Pasadena Playhouse and his stage work included The Caine Mutiny. He also had a recurring role as Captain Carpenter, the boss of Lt. Phillip Gerard in The Fugitive starring David Janssen. He starred in some low-budget science-fiction films in the 1950s, including The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), Day the World Ended (1955), Not of This Earth (1957) and the cult classic Queen of Outer Space (1958). Birch also had small roles in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1967).
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Lawrence Dobkin (September 16, 1919 – October 28, 2002) was an American television director, character actor and screenwriter whose career spanned seven decades.
Christopher Dark was born on April 21, 1920 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA as Alfred Francis DeLeo. He was an actor probably known best for guest starring roles in many TV shows such as Bonanza, Lone Ranger and Sea Hunt, but also for movies like Suddenly! (1954), World Without End (1956) and The Rabbit Trap (1959). He was married to Eleanor Dark (married 1948-till his death) He died on October 10, 1971 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA of a heart attack.
Guy Owen Wilkerson (December 21, 1899 – July 15, 1971) was an American actor, known primarily for his roles in Western B movies, who with his tall, lanky frame, he often played sidekick or comedy relief parts.