Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had dimensions. Good girls had lovers and babies and held down jobs, while the bad girls were cast in a sympathetic light. And they did it all without apology.
05-06-2003
56 min
THIS
HELLA
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Hugh Munro Neely
Writers:
Hugh Munro Neely, Andie Hicks
Production:
Timeline Films
Key Crew
Producer:
Hugh Munro Neely
Producer:
Keith Lawrence
Editor:
Andie Hicks
Editor:
Hugh Munro Neely
Co-Producer:
Elaina Archer
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Jane Fonda
Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress, activist, and former fashion model. She is the recipient of various accolades including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Golden Lion Honorary Award, the Honorary Palme d'Or, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
Born to socialite Frances Ford Seymour and actor Henry Fonda, Fonda made her acting debut with the 1960 Broadway play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and made her screen debut later the same year with the romantic comedy Tall Story. She rose to prominence during the 1960s with the comedies Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (1963), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967), and Barbarella (1968). Her first husband was Barbarella director Roger Vadim. A seven-time Academy Award nominee, she received her first nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress twice in the 1970s, for Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), On Golden Pond (1981), and The Morning After (1986). Consecutive hits Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), California Suite (1978), The Electric Horseman (1979), and 9 to 5 (1980) sustained Fonda's box-office drawing power, and she won a Primetime Emmy Award for her performance in the TV film The Dollmaker (1984).
In 1982, she released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling VHS of the 20th century. It would be the first of 22 such videos over the next 13 years, which would collectively sell over 17 million copies. Divorced from her second husband Tom Hayden, she married billionaire media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting, following a row of commercially unsuccessful films concluded by Stanley & Iris (1990). Fonda divorced Turner in 2001 and returned to the screen with the hit Monster-in-Law (2005). Although Georgia Rule (2007) was her only other movie during the 2000s, in the early 2010s she fully re-launched her career. Subsequent films have included The Butler (2013), This Is Where I Leave You (2014), Youth (2015), Our Souls at Night (2017), and Book Club (2018). In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 49-year absence from the stage, in the play 33 Variations which earned her a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, while her major recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012–14) earned her two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2009 and 2012. Fonda currently stars as Grace Hanson in the Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie, which debuted in 2015 and has earned her nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Frances Marion Dee (November 26, 1909 – March 6, 2004) was an American screen and television actress. She starred opposite Maurice Chevalier in the early talkie musical Playboy of Paris (1930). She starred in the film An American Tragedy (1931) in a role later recreated by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1951 re-titled remake A Place in the Sun. She also had a prominent role in the classic 1943 Val Lewton psychological horror film I Walked With a Zombie. Dee was the wife of Hollywood star Joel McCrea.
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Karen Morley (December 12, 1909 – March 8, 2003) was an American film actress.After working at the Pasadena Playhouse, she came to the attention of the director Clarence Brown when he was looking for an actress to stand-in for Greta Garbo in screen tests. This led to a contract with MGM and roles in such films as Mata Hari (1931), Scarface (1932), The Phantom of Crestwood (1932), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), Arsene Lupin (1933) and Dinner at Eight (1933).
In 1934, Morley left MGM after arguments about her roles and her private life. Her first film after leaving MGM was Our Daily Bread (1934) directed by King Vidor. She continued to work as a freelance performer, and appeared in Michael Curtiz's Black Fury, and The Littlest Rebel with Shirley Temple. Without the support of a studio, her roles became less frequent, however she played a supporting role in Pride and Prejudice (1940).
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Kitty Carlisle Hart (September 3, 1910 – April 17, 2007) was an American singer, actress and spokeswoman for the arts. She is best remembered as a regular panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth. She served 20 years on the New York State Council on the Arts.
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Barbara Stanwyck (July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress. A film and television star, she was known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence and was a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra. After a short stint as a stage actress, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood, before turning to television. Stanwyck was nominated for the Academy Award four times, and won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. She was the recipient of honorary lifetime awards from the Motion Picture Academy, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Golden Globes, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the Screen Actors Guild, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is ranked as the eleventh greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres; from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and thrice divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 films, television and theater roles to her credit. In 1999, Davis was placed second, after Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of all time.
C. Aubrey Smith (Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, CBE) was an English born stage and screen actor, prominent in Hollywood films starting from the beginning of the sound era.
Chester Morris (born John Chester Brooks Morris; February 16, 1901 – September 11, 1970) was an American stage, film, television, and radio actor. He had some prestigious film roles early in his career, and was nominated for an Academy Award. Chester Morris is best remembered today for portraying Boston Blackie, a criminal-turned-detective, in the modestly budgeted Boston Blackie film series of the 1940s.
William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960) was an American film actor. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable seventh among the greatest male stars of all time.
Gable's most famous role was Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh. His performance earned him his third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor; he won for It Happened One Night (1934) and was also nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Later performances were in Run Silent, Run Deep, a submarine war film, and his final film, The Misfits (1961), which paired Gable with Marilyn Monroe, also in her last screen appearance.
During his long film career, Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time. Joan Crawford, who was his favorite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy was with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer in three. Gable was often named the top male star in the mid-30s, and was second only to the top box-office draw of all, Shirley Temple.
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Claudette Colbert was born in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, France on September 13, 1903 and was brought to the United States as a child three years later. Born Emilie 'Lily' Claudette Chauchoin, she went to high school in New York. She was studying at the Art Students League when, in 1923, she took the name Claudette Colbert for her first Broadway role in "The Wild Westcotts". Her most noteworthy stage vehicle was the "The Barker" in 1927. Her first film was a silent For the Love of Mike (1927), directed by Frank Capra. Made on a shoestring, the movie was a flop, and she vowed that it would be her last film role: "I only left Broadway when the crash came. The Depression killed the theater, and the pictures were manna from heaven". She had her first film success the next year, however, in The Lady Lies (1929).
Her early notable films were all box-office hits and included Cleopatra (1934), in which she played the title role enticingly. She had her greatest triumph playing a runaway heiress, with enormous charm, opposite Clark Gable in Capra's comedy It Happened One Night (1934), for which she won the Academy Award as Best Actress. By 1938 her keen ability in business made her the highest paid star in Hollywood. By 1950, though, her star had begun to wane. She returned to the stage in 1956 when she replaced Margaret Sullavan during the spring and summer in the comedy "Janus". Appearances in other Broadway productions followed, including "The Marriage-Go-Round". Besides the stage, she did TV specials and had a supporting role in a notable TV movie, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987), for which she received a Golden Globe award. In 1989 she was presented with a Life Achievement award from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
She married actor Norman Foster in 1928, although they never lived together and were divorced after seven years. She married surgeon Dr. Joel Pressman soon after and remained married until his death in 1968. In latter years she divided her time between an apartment in New York and a 200-year-old plantation house in Speightstown, Barbados, where she entertained such guests as Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan. She remained on Barbados Island after her stroke. On July 30, 1996, Claudette died in Speightstown, Barbados. She was 92.
Dolores del Río (3 August 1904 – 11 April 1983) was a Mexican film actress.
She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Later in life, she became an important actress in Mexican films.
She was generally thought to be one of the most beautiful actresses of her era, and was the first Latin American movie star to have international appeal.
In the Silent film era, Del Rio was considered a counterpart to Rudolph Valentino. With the arrival of the talkies, she became one of the principal Art Deco symbols of beauty.
Del Río was one of the principal stars of Mexican films during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. She was frequently called the "Princess of México".
Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American dancer, singer, actor and choreographer. He is widely regarded as the most influential dancer in the history of film. Born as Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 10, 1899, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz, a brewer, he entered show business at age 5. He was successful in vaudeville and on Broadway as well as in London's West End together with his sister Adele, a partnership that lasted 27 years. After Adele retired to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in Dancing Lady (1933) before starting work on RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933). In the latter film, he was teamed with Ginger Rogers, with whom he worked in 9 RKO pictures. Astaire later appeared opposite a number of partners, including Cyd Charisse, Rita Hayworth, Vera-Ellen and Barrie Chase. Astaire remained active well into old age, starring in musicals through 1968, and also performed a number of straight dramatic roles in film and TV. Throughout his career, he was also active in recording and radio. He died of pneumonia on June 22, 1987 in Los Angeles.
Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was an American actor, regarded as one of Hollywood's most celebrated, versatile stars of the 1930s and 1940s. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), as well as the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Years Ago (1947) and Long Day's Journey into Night (1956).
March is one of only two actors, the other being Helen Hayes, to have won both the Academy Award and the Tony Award twice.
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Gene Raymond, born Raymond Guion, was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, and decorated military pilot.
His screen debut was in Personal Maid (1931). Another early appearance was in the multi-director If I Had a Million with W. C. Fields and Charles Laughton. With his blond good looks, classic profile, and youthful exuberance — plus a name change to the more pronounceable "Gene Raymond" — he scored in films like the classic Zoo in Budapest with Loretta Young, and a series of light RKO musicals, mostly with Ann Sothern. He wrote a number of songs, including the popular "Will You?" which he sang to Sothern in Smartest Girl in Town. His wife, Jeanette MacDonald, sang several of his more classical pieces in her concerts and recorded one entitled "Let Me Always Sing".
His most notable films, mostly as a second lead actor, include Red Dust (1932) with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, Zoo in Budapest with Loretta Young, Ex-Lady with Bette Davis, Flying Down to Rio with Dolores del Río, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, I Am Suzanne with Lilian Harvey, Sadie McKee with Joan Crawford, Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, and The Locket with Laraine Day, Brian Aherne, and Robert Mitchum. MacDonald and Raymond made one film together, Smilin' Through, which came out as the U.S. was on the verge of entering World War II.
After service in the United States Army Air Forces Raymond returned to Hollywood. He wrote, directed and starred in the 1949 film Million Dollar Weekend. In later years he appeared in only a few films. His last major film was The Best Man in 1964 with Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson.
In the 1950s he mostly worked in television, appearing in Playhouse of Stars, Fireside Theatre, Hollywood Summer Theater and TV Reader's Digest. In the 1970s he appeared on ABC Television Network's Paris 7000 and had guest roles in The Outer Limits, Robert Montgomery Presents, Playhouse 90, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Ironside, The Defenders, Mannix, The Name of the Game, Lux Video Theatre, Kraft Television Theatre and U.S. Steel Hour.
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Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the twentieth century.
During her long career, she made a total of 73 films and is noted for her role as Fred Astaire's partner in a series of ten musical films. She achieved great success in a variety of film roles and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Kitty Foyle. After winning a 1925 Charleston dance contest that launched a successful vaudeville career, she gained recognition as a Broadway actress for her stage debut in Girl Crazy. This led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film role as a supporting actress in 42nd Street.
In the 1930s, Rogers' nine films with Fred Astaire gave RKO Pictures some of its biggest successes, most notably Top Hat and Swing Time. But after two commercial failures with Astaire, she branched out into dramatic and comedy films. Her acting was well received by critics and audiences, and she became one of the biggest box-office draws and highest paid actresses of the 1940s. Her performance in Kitty Foyle won her the Oscar for Best Actress.
Rogers' popularity peaked by the end of the decade. She reunited with Astaire in 1949 in the commercially successful The Barkleys of Broadway. After an unsuccessful period in the 1950s, she returned to Broadway in 1965, playing the lead role in Hello, Dolly!. More Broadway roles followed, along with her stage directorial debut in 1985 of an off-Broadway production of Babes in Arms. She also made television acting appearances until 1987. In 1992, Rogers was recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors. She died of a heart attack in 1995, at age 83.
Rogers is associated with the phrase "backwards and in high heels", which is attributed to Bob Thaves' Frank and Ernest 1982 cartoon with the caption "Sure he [Astaire] was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did...backwards and in high heels". This phrase is sometimes incorrectly attributed to Ann Richards, who used it in her keynote address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
A Republican and a devout Christian Scientist, Rogers married five times with all of them ending in divorce, and having no children. During her long career, Rogers made 73 films, and her musical films with Astaire are credited with revolutionizing the genre. Rogers was a major movie star during the "Golden Age" of Hollywood and is often considered an American icon. She ranks number 14 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of female stars of classic American cinema. Her autobiography Ginger: My Story was published in 1991.
Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragic characters, and her subtle and understated performances. For most of her career, she was the highest-paid actor or actress at MGM, making her for many years its "premier prestige star." Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and in 1954, she was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for her luminous and unforgettable screen performances". In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Irving Grant Thalberg (May 30, 1899 – September 14, 1936) was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and ability to select scripts, choose actors, gather production staff, and make profitable films, mostly for Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
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James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American film actor. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of roles, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys". In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.
In his first performing role, Cagney danced dressed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a hoofer and comedian until his first major acting role in 1925. He secured several other roles, receiving good reviews before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews for his acting, Warners signed him for an initial $500 a week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven year contract. Cagney's seventh film, The Public Enemy, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for its famous grapefruit scene, the film thrust Cagney into the spotlight, making him one of Warners' and Hollywood's biggest stars.
In 1938, he received his first Academy Award Best Actor nomination for Angels with Dirty Faces, before winning in 1942 for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He was nominated a third time in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me. Cagney retired for 20 years in 1961, spending time on his farm before returning for a part in Ragtime mainly to aid his recovery from a stroke.
Cagney walked out on Warners several times over his career, each time coming back on improved personal and artistic terms. In 1935, he sued Warners for breach of contract and won; this marked one of the first times an actor had beaten a studio over a contract issue. He worked for an independent film company for a year while the suit was settled, and also established his own production company, Cagney Productions, in 1942 before returning to Warners again four years later. Jack Warner called him "The Professional Againster", in reference to Cagney’s refusal to be pushed around. Cagney also made numerous morale-boosting troop tours before and during World War II, and was President of the Screen Actors Guild for two years.
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Jean Harlow (born Harlean Harlow Carpenter; March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Though her screen persona changed dramatically during her career, one constant was her sense of humor. She was given superior movie roles to show off her looks and nascent comedic talent. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of the biggest stars in the US, whose image in the public eye has endured. Harlow was consistently voted one of the strongest box office draws in the United States from 1933 onward, often surpassing that of MGM's top leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer. Her movies also continued to make huge profits at the box office even during the middle of the Depression. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow No. 22 on its greatest female screen legends of classical Hollywood cinema list.
Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress.
After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy wisecracking blonde, she was a pre-Code staple of Warner Brothers and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold-diggers. Blondell continued acting for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).
Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films, Grease (1978) and the remake of The Champ (1979), released shortly before her death from leukemia.
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Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, 190? – May 10, 1977) was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford launched a publicity campaign and built an image as a nationally known flapper by the end of the 1920s. By the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These "rags-to-riches" stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money. By the end of the 1930s, she was labeled "box office poison".
After an absence of nearly two years from the screen, Crawford staged a comeback by starring in Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1955, she became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company, through her marriage to company president Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors but was forcibly retired in 1973. She continued acting in film and television regularly through the 1960s, when her performances became fewer; after the release of the horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life. She became more and more reclusive until her death in 1977.
American actor John Gilbert (born John Cecil Pringle) was one of the biggest stars of the Silent films era. His career subsequently significantly waned during the first years of the sound era.
Johnny Weissmuller (born Johann Peter Weißmüller; June 2, 1904 – January 20, 1984) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American swimmer and actor. Weissmuller was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven world records. After his swimming career, he became the sixth actor to portray Tarzan in films, a role he played in twelve motion pictures. Dozens of other actors have also played Tarzan, but Weissmuller is by far the best known. His character's distinctive, ululating Tarzan yell is still often used in films.
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Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress of film, stage, and television. A recipient of a record four Academy Awards and an Emmy Award, she was ranked as the greatest female star in the history of American cinema by the American Film Institute. She was best known for her sophisticated, headstrong and outspoken screen persona that she cultivated through roles in a variety of film genres — from screwball comedies to literary dramas. Apart from her acclaimed acting and distinctive voice, her impact extended to fashion as well as she helped make wearing pants more socially acceptable for women.
Throughout her six-decade career, Hepburn's work in stage, film, and television brought her much acclaim — including twelve Academy Award nominations, six Emmy Award nominations, eight Golden Globe Award nominations, and two Tony Award nominations. She co-starred with screen legends like Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Laurence Olivier and Henry Fonda and performed in plays written and directed by notable playwrights and directors. Her most successful film pairing was with Spencer Tracy, with whom she made multiple hit pictures. The last of their 9 films together was Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), which was completed shortly before Tracy's death. Her many performances on the stage included plays by Shakespeare and Shaw, and a Broadway musical. She passed away from cardiac arrest on 29 June 2003 at her family home in Connecticut and since then, has been honored with several memorials.
Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943) was an English actor, director and producer. He wrote many stories and articles for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair and was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s.
Active in both Britain and Hollywood, Howard played Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). He had roles in many other films, often playing the quintessential Englishman, including Berkeley Square (1933), Of Human Bondage (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938), Intermezzo (1939), "Pimpernel" Smith (1941), and The First of the Few (1942). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Berkeley Square and Pygmalion.
Howard's World War II activities included acting and filmmaking. He helped to make anti-German propaganda and shore up support for the Allies—two years after his death the British Film Yearbook described Howard's work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda". He was rumoured to have been involved with British or Allied Intelligence, sparking conspiracy theories regarding his death in 1943 when the Luftwaffe shot down BOAC Flight 777 over the Atlantic (off the coast of Cedeira, A Coruña), on which he was a passenger.
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Loretta Young (January 6, 1913 – August 12, 2000) was an American actress. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953. She won the 1948 best actress Academy Award for her role in the 1947 film The Farmer's Daughter, and received an Oscar nomination for her role in Come to the Stable, in 1950. Young then moved to the relatively new medium of television, where she had a dramatic anthology series called The Loretta Young Show, from 1953 to 1961. The series earned three Emmy Awards, and reran successfully on daytime TV and later in syndication. Young, a devout Catholic, later worked with various Catholic charities after her acting career.
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Edith Norma Shearer (August 10, 1902 – June 12, 1983) was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s. Her early films cast her as the girl next door, but for most of the Pre-Code film era, beginning with the 1930 film The Divorcee, for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress, she played sexually liberated women in sophisticated contemporary comedies. Later she appeared in historical and period films.
Unlike many of her MGM contemporaries, Shearer's fame declined steeply after retirement. By the time of her death in 1983, she was largely remembered at best for her "noble" roles in The Women, Marie Antoinette, and Romeo and Juliet. Shearer's legacy began to be re-evaluated in the 1990s with the publication of two biographies and the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and VHS release of her films, many of them unseen since the implementation of the Production Code some sixty years before. Focus shifted to her pre-Code "divorcee" persona, and Shearer was rediscovered as "the exemplar of sophisticated [1930's] woman-hood... exploring love and sex with an honesty that would be considered frank by modern standards".
Simultaneously, Shearer's ten-year collaboration with portrait photographer George Hurrell and her lasting contribution to fashion through the designs of Adrian were also recognized.
Shearer is widely celebrated by some as one of cinema's feminist pioneers: "the first American film actress to make it chic and acceptable to be single and not a virgin on screen". In March 2008, two of her most famous pre-code films, The Divorcee and A Free Soul, were released on DVD.
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Mae West (born Mary Jane West; August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades. Known for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in vaudeville and on the stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a comedienne, actress and writer in the motion picture industry. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute named West 15th among the greatest female stars of all time. One of the more controversial movie stars of her day, West encountered many problems including censorship. When her cinematic career ended, she continued to perform on stage, in Las Vegas, in the United Kingdom, on radio and television, and recorded rock and roll albums. She used the alias Jane Mast early in her career.
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Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich (December 27, 1901 – May 6, 1992) was a German actress and singer.
Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself. In 1920s Berlin, she acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, brought her international fame and a contract with Paramount Pictures in the US. Hollywood films such as Shanghai Express and Desire capitalized on her glamour and exotic looks, cementing her stardom and making her one of the highest paid actresses of the era. Dietrich became a US citizen in 1937; during World War II, she was a high-profile front-line entertainer. Although she still made occasional films in the post-war years, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s through the 1970s touring the world as a successful show performer.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth greatest female star of all time.
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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Ellen Miriam Hopkins (October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an American actress known for her versatility. She first signed with Paramount Pictures in 1930, working with Ernst Lubitsch and Joel McCrea, among many others. Her long-running feud with Bette Davis was publicized for effect. Later she became a pioneer of TV drama. Hopkins was a distinguished Hollywood hostess, who moved in intellectual and creative circles. At age 20, Hopkins became a chorus girl in New York City. In 1930, she signed with Paramount Pictures, and made her official film debut in Fast and Loose. Her first great success was in the 1931 horror drama film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which she portrayed the character Ivy Pearson, a prostitute who becomes entangled with Jekyll and Hyde. Hopkins received rave reviews, but because of the potential controversy of the film and her character, many of her scenes were cut before the official release, reducing her screen time to approximately five minutes.
Nevertheless, her career ascended swiftly thereafter and in 1932 she scored her breakthrough in Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, where she proved her charm and wit as a beautiful and jealous pickpocket. During the pre-code Hollywood of the early 1930s, she appeared in The Smiling Lieutenant, The Story of Temple Drake and Design for Living, all of which were box office successes and critically acclaimed. Her pre-Code films were considered risqué at the time, with The Story of Temple Drake depicting a rape scene and Design for Living featuring a ménage à trois with Fredric March and Gary Cooper. She also had success during the remainder of the decade with the romantic comedy The Richest Girl in the World (1934), the historical drama Becky Sharp (1935), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, Barbary Coast (1935), These Three (1936) (the first of four films with director William Wyler) and The Old Maid (1939).
Hopkins was one of the first actresses approached to play the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934). However, she rejected the part, and Claudette Colbert was cast instead. She did audition for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, having one advantage none of the other candidates had: she was a native Georgian. But the part went to Vivien Leigh. Both Colbert and Leigh won Oscars for their performances.
Hopkins had well-publicized fights with her arch-enemy Bette Davis (Hopkins believed Davis was having an affair with Hopkins' husband at the time), when they co-starred in their two films The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance (1943). Davis admitted to enjoying very much a scene in Old Acquaintance in which she shakes Hopkins forcefully during a scene where Hopkins' character makes unfounded allegations against Davis's. There were even press photos taken with both divas in a boxing ring with gloves up and director Vincent Sherman between the two.
Hopkins was a television pioneer, performing in teleplays in three decades, spanning the late 1940s through the late 1960s, in such programs as The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre (1949), Lux Video Theatre (1951-1955) and even an episode of The Flying Nun in 1969.
She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures at 1701 Vine Street, and one for television at 1708 Vine Street.
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Myrna Loy (August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, she devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. Originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, her career prospects improved following her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). Her successful pairing with William Powell resulted in 14 films together, including five subsequent Thin Man films.
Although Loy was never nominated for a competitive Academy Award, in March 1991 she was presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the inscription "In recognition of her extraordinary qualities both on screen and off, with appreciation for a lifetime's worth of indelible performances."
During World War II, Loy served as assistant to the director of military and naval welfare for the Red Cross. She was later appointed a member-at-large of the U.S. Commission to UNESCO. Her acting career by no means ended in the 1940s. She continued to actively pursue stage and television appearances in addition to films in subsequent decades.
Ricardo Cortez (September 19, 1900 – April 28, 1977) was an American film actor who began his career during the silent film era.
Born Jacob Krantz in New York City into a Jewish family, he worked on Wall Street in a broker's office and as a boxer before his looks got him into the film business. Hollywood executives changed his name to Cortez to appeal to film-goers as a "Latin lover" to compete with such highly popular actors of the era as Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro and Antonio Moreno. When rumour began to circulate that Cortez was not actually Spanish, the studios tried to pass him off as a different type of Latin, French, before they finally admitted his (supposedly) Viennese origin.
Cortez appeared in over 100 films. He played opposite Joan Crawford in Montana Moon in 1930, played Sam Spade in the original The Maltese Falcon in 1931, co-starred with Charles Farrell and Bette Davis in The Big Shakedown and Wonder Bar (with Al Jolson and Dolores del Río) in 1934. He also played Perry Mason in the 1936 film The Case of the Black Cat. Although he began his career playing romantic leads with actresses like Greta Garbo, when sound cinema arrived, his powerful delivery and New York accent made him an ideal villain and conman, and he switched from sex symbol to character actor.
Cortez was married to silent film actress Alma Rubens until her death of pneumonia in 1931.
When he retired from the film business, Cortez went to work as a stockbroker for Solomon Brothers on New York's Wall Street. He died in New York City in 1977 and was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.
He was the older brother of noted cinematographer Stanley Cortez (born Stanislaus Krantz).
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Robert Montgomery (born Henry Montgomery Jr.; May 21, 1904 – September 27, 1981) was an American film and television actor, director, and producer. He was also the father of actress Elizabeth Montgomery.
Montgomery settled in New York City to try his hand at writing and acting. He established a stage career, and became popular enough to turn down an offer to appear opposite Vilma Bánky in the film This Is Heaven (1929). Sharing a stage with George Cukor gave him an entry to Hollywood and a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he debuted in So This Is College (also 1929).
Montgomery initially played exclusively in comedy roles, but portrayed a character in his first drama film in The Big House (1930). MGM was initially reluctant to assign him in such a role, until "his earnestness, and his convincing arguments, with demonstrations of how he would play the character" won him the assignment. From The Big House on, he was in constant demand. Appearing as Greta Garbo's romantic interest in Inspiration (1930) started him toward stardom with a rush. Norma Shearer chose him to star opposite her in The Divorcee (1930), Strangers May Kiss (1931), and Private Lives (1931), which led him to stardom.
In another challenging role, Montgomery played a psychopath in the chiller Night Must Fall (1937), for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination.
After World War II broke out in Europe in September, 1939, and while the United States was still officially neutral, Montgomery enlisted in London for American field service and drove ambulances in France until the Dunkirk evacuation. He then returned to Hollywood and addressed a massive rally on the MGM lot for the American Red Cross in July 1940. Montgomery returned to playing light comedy roles, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) with Carole Lombard. He continued his search for dramatic roles. For his role as Joe Pendleton, a boxer and pilot in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Montgomery was nominated for an Oscar a second time. After the U.S. entered World War II in December 1941, he joined the United States Navy, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander, and served on the USS Barton (DD-722) which was part of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944.
In 1945, Montgomery returned to Hollywood, making his uncredited directing debut with They Were Expendable, where he directed some of the PT boat scenes when director John Ford was unable to work for health reasons. Montgomery's first credited film as director and his final film for MGM was the film noir Lady in the Lake (1947), in which he also starred, which received mixed reviews. Adapted from Raymond Chandler's detective novel and sanitized for the censorship of the day, the film is unusual because it was filmed entirely from Marlowe's vantage point. Montgomery only appeared on camera a few times, three times in a mirror reflection.
Active in Republican politics and concerned about communist influence in the entertainment industry, Montgomery was a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.
Montgomery has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies at 6440 Hollywood Boulevard, and another for television at 1631 Vine Street.
Ruth Chatterton (December 24, 1892 – November 24, 1961) was an American stage, film, and television actress. She was at her most popular in the early to mid-1930s, and in the same era gained prominence as an aviator, one of the few female pilots in the United States at the time. In the late 1930s, Chatterton retired from film acting but continued her career on the stage. She had several TV roles beginning in the late 1940s and became a successful novelist in the 1950s.
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Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) was an American actress, talk-show host, and bon vivant.
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Gilbert Roland (born Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso, December 11, 1905 – May 15, 1994) was a Mexican-born American film and television actor whose career spanned seven decades from the 1920s until the 1980s. He was twice nominated for the Golden Globe Award in 1952 and 1964, and inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
Roland was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. When Pancho Villa took control of their town, Roland and his family fled to the United States. He lived in Texas until at age 14 he hopped on a freight train and went to Hollywood. He chose his screen name by combining the names of his favorite actors, John Gilbert and Ruth Roland. He was often cast in the stereotypical Latin lover role.
Roland's first film contract was with Paramount. His first major role was in the collegiate comedy The Plastic Age (1925) together with Clara Bow, to whom he became engaged. In 1926, he played Armand in Camille opposite Norma Talmadge, with whom he was romantically involved, and they starred together in several productions. With the advent of sound films, Roland frequently appeared in Spanish language adaptations of American films, in romantic lead roles. Roland served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II.
Beginning in the 1940s, critics began to take notice of his acting and he was praised for his supporting roles in John Huston's We Were Strangers (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Thunder Bay (1953), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). He also appeared in a series of films in the mid-1940s as the popular character "The Cisco Kid". He played Hugo, the agnostic friend of the three shepherd children in The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima. In 1953, Roland played Greek-American sponge diver Mike Petrakis in the epic Beneath the 12-Mile Reef. His last film appearance was in the 1982 western Barbarosa.
Roland married actress Constance Bennett in 1941. They were married until 1946 and had two daughters. His second marriage, to Guillermina Cantú in 1954, lasted until his death 40 years later.
Gilbert Roland died of cancer in Beverly Hills, California in 1994, aged 88.
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Lee Phelps (May 15, 1893 – March 19, 1953) was an American film actor. He appeared in over 600 films between 1917 and 1953, mainly in uncredited roles. He also appeared in three films - Grand Hotel, You Can't Take It with You, and Gone with the Wind - that won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Phelps appeared in the 1952 episode "Outlaw's Paradise" as a judge in the syndicated western television series The Adventures of Kit Carson, starring Bill Williams in the title role. He also appeared in a 1952 TV episode (#90) of The Lone Ranger.
Nathaniel Greene 'Nat' Pendleton was an American former Olympic wrestler turned actor.
Two-time Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) champion (1914-1915) in the 175-lb. class at Columbia University, Pendleton graduated Class of 1916. He wrestled for the United States at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium, earning a silver medal, losing only one match due to a controversial point decision. After the Games he became a professional wrestler and was a big fan favorite, which led to Hollywood.
In the 1920 census he was living in Manhattan with his first wife Juanita Alfonzo (age 22) and her brother Ramon Alfonso (age 13). He was working as a sports manager.
Pendleton was usually cast as a circus strongman, brutish thug, dumb cop, or dense buffoon, but he had a college degree and in 1933 wrote the script for Deception (1932), in which he starred - not surprisingly - as a wrestler.
Upon his death from a heart attack, his remains were interred at Cypress View Mausoleum and Crematory in San Diego, California.
Nat Pendleton was inducted into the Columbia University Athletics Hall of Fame inaugural class in 2006.
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Warner Oland (born Johan Verner Ölund, October 3, 1879 – August 6, 1938) was a Swedish-American actor most remembered for playing several Chinese and Chinese-American characters: the Honolulu Police detective, Lieutenant Charlie Chan; Dr. Fu Manchu; and Henry Chang in Shanghai Express. His family emigrated to the United States when he was 13. He pursued a film career that would include time on Broadway and dozens of film appearances, including 16 Charlie Chan films. After several years in theater, including appearances on Broadway as Warner Oland, in 1912 he made his silent film debut in Pilgrim's Progress, a film based on the John Bunyan novel. As a result of his training as a Shakespearean actor and his easy adoption of a sinister look, he was much in demand as a villain and in ethnic roles. Over the next 15 years, he appeared in more than 30 films, including a major role in The Jazz Singer (1927), one of the first talkies produced. Oland's normal appearance fit the Hollywood expectation of caricatured Asianness of the time, despite his having no definitively proven Asian cultural background. Oland portrayed a variety of Asian characters in several movies before being offered the leading role in the 1929 film, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. It was the first onscreen portrayal of the Fu Manchu character in film. Oland continued to appear onscreen as an Asian, probably more often than any other white actor in the history of cinema. In Old San Francisco, Oland played an Asian unsuccessfully impersonating a white man.
Oland was the first actor to play a werewolf in a major Hollywood film, biting the protagonist, played by Henry Hull, in Werewolf of London (1935). Once again, Oland's character was Asian.
A box office success, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu made Oland a star, and during the next two years he portrayed the evil Dr. Fu Manchu in three more films (although the second one was purely a cameo appearance). Firmly locked into such roles, he was cast as Charlie Chan in the international detective mystery film Charlie Chan Carries On (1931) and then in director Josef von Sternberg's 1932 classic film Shanghai Express opposite Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong.
The enormous worldwide box office success of his Charlie Chan film led to more, with Oland starring in 16 Chan films in total. The series, Jill Lepore later wrote, "kept Fox afloat" during the 1930s, while earning Oland $40,000 per movie. Oland took his role seriously, studying the Chinese language and calligraphy.
Maurice Murphy was born on October 3, 1913 in Seattle, Washington, USA. He was an actor, known for Tailspin Tommy (1934), Beau Geste (1926) and Peter Pan (1924). He died on November 23, 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall (23 May 1890 – 22 January 1966) was an English stage, screen and radio actor who, despite losing a leg during the First World War, starred in many popular and well-regarded Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s. After a successful theatrical career in the United Kingdom and North America, he became an in-demand Hollywood leading man, frequently appearing in romantic melodramas and occasional comedies. In his later years, he turned to character acting.
Aline MacMahon was an American stage, screen, and television actress. She worked extensively from 1921, when she began appearing on Broadway, until her full retirement from acting in 1975. MacMahon was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1944 film Dragon Seed.
Jack La Rue (born Gaspere Biondolillo) was an American stage, screen, and television actor. La Rue went from high school to his first acting job, in Otis Skinner's road company production of Blood and Sand. He performed in Broadway plays from around 1923 to 1931. According to La Rue, while appearing in Mae West's play Diamond Lil, he was spotted by Howard Hawks, who offered him a part in the film Scarface, starring Paul Muni.
He moved to Hollywood, where he appeared in numerous films. However, Scarface was not one of them. La Rue stated in a newspaper article that, after four days, Hawks had to replace him with George Raft because La Rue was taller than Muni and had a more powerful voice. Later, however, Raft turned down the role of the despicable villain in The Story of Temple Drake, fearing it would damage his screen image, so the part went to La Rue. Sometimes mistaken for Humphrey Bogart, he played thugs and gangsters for the most part. However, director Frank Borzage atypically cast him as a priest in the 1932 version of A Farewell to Arms simply because, according to newspaper columnist Hubbard Keavy, he was "tired of seeing conventional characters". La Rue stated he turned down a role in The Godfather and many parts in the television series The Untouchables because of the way they portrayed Italian-Americans.
La Rue died of a heart attack at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 81. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California.
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Allen Jenkins (April 9, 1900 – July 20, 1974) was an American character actor on stage, screen and television. He was born Alfred McGonegal on Staten Island, New York.
He studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In his first stage appearance, he danced next to James Cagney in a chorus line for an off-Broadway musical called Pitter-Patter. He made five dollars a week. He also appeared one thousand times in Broadway plays between 1924 and 1962, including The Front Page with Lee Tracy (1928). His big break came when he replaced Spencer Tracy for three weeks in the Broadway play The Last Mile.
He was called to Hollywood by Darryl F. Zanuck and signed first to Paramount Pictures and shortly afterwards to Warner Bros. He originated the character of Frankie Wells in the Broadway production of Blessed Event and reprised the role in the film adaptation, both in 1932. With the advent of talking pictures, he made a career out of playing comic henchmen, stooges, policemen and other "tough guys" in numerous films of the 1930s and 1940s, especially for Warner Bros. He was labeled the "greatest scene-stealer of the 1930s" by the New York Times. He voiced the character of "Officer Dibble" on the Hanna-Barbera television cartoon Top Cat and was a regular on the 1956-1957 television situation comedy Hey, Jeannie! (1956), starring Jeannie Carson. He was also a guest star on The Red Skelton Show, I Love Lucy, Playhouse 90, The Ernie Kovacs Show, Zane Grey Theater, and The Sid Caesar Show. Eleven days before his death he made his final appearance, at the end of Billy Wilder's 1974 film adaptation of The Front Page.
He went public with his alcoholism and was the first actor to speak in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate about it. He helped start the first Alcoholics Anonymous programs in California prisons for women.
Jenkins, James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Frank McHugh were the original members of the so-called "Irish Mafia". He was the seventh member of the Screen Actors Guild.
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Olin Ross Howland (February 10, 1886 – September 20, 1959) was an American film and theatre actor.
Howland was born in Denver, Colorado, to Joby A. Howland, one of the youngest enlisted participants in the Civil War, and Mary C. Bunting. His older sister was the famous stage actress Jobyna Howland.
From 1909 to 1927, Howland appeared on Broadway in musicals, occasionally performing in silent films. The musicals include Leave It to Jane (1917), Two Little Girls in Blue (1921) and Wildflower (1923). He was in the film Janice Meredith (1924) with Marion Davies. With the advent of sound films, his theatre background proved an asset, and he concentrated mostly on films thereafter, appearing in nearly two hundred movies between 1918 and 1958.
Howland often played eccentric and rural roles in Hollywood. His parts were often small and uncredited, and he never got a leading role. He was a personal favorite of David O. Selznick, who cast him in his movies Nothing Sacred (1937) as a strange luggage man, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938, as the teacher Mr. Dobbins) and Gone with the Wind (1939) as a carpetbagger businessman. He also played in numerous westerns from Republic Pictures, including the John Wayne films In Old California (1942) and Angel and the Badman (1947). As a young man, Howland learned to fly at the Wright Flying School and soloed on a Wright Model B. This lent special sentiment in his scenes with James Stewart in the film The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), as Stewart was also a pilot in real life. The Spirit of St. Louis and Them (1954),where he played a drunken old man, and The Blob (1958) were his last films.
He also played in telelevision shows during the 1950s. In 1958 and 1959, he was cast as Charley Perkins in five episodes of ABC's sitcom The Real McCoys, starring Walter Brennan.
Howland never married and had no children. He worked until his death in Hollywood, California, at the age of 73.
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Jean Pierre Hersholt (12 July 1886 – 2 June 1956) was a Danish-born actor who lived in the United States, where he was a leading film and radio talent, best known for his 17 years starring on radio in Dr. Christian and for playing Shirley Temple's grandfather in Heidi. Asked how to pronounce his name, he told The Literary Digest, "In English, her'sholt; in Danish, hairs'hult." Of his total credits, 75 were silent films and 65 were sound films. He appeared in 140 films and directed four.
Ann Harding (August 7, 1902 – September 1, 1981) was an American theatre, motion picture, radio, and television actress. A regular player on Broadway and in regional theater in the 1920s, in the 1930s Harding was one of the first actresses to gain fame in the new medium of "talking pictures", and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931 for her work in Holiday.
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986) was an English-born American actor, known as one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men. He was known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing.
Grant was born in Horfield, Bristol. He became attracted to theater at a young age and began performing with a troupe known as "The Penders" at age six. At the age of 16, he went as a stage performer with the Pender Troupe for a tour of the US. After a series of successful performances in New York City, he decided to stay there. He established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s.
Grant initially appeared in crime films or dramas such as Blonde Venus (1932) with Marlene Dietrich and She Done Him Wrong (1933) with Mae West, but later gained renown for his performances in romantic and screwball comedies such as The Awful Truth (1937) with Irene Dunne, Bringing Up Baby (1938) with Katharine Hepburn, His Girl Friday (1940) and The Philadelphia Story (1940) with Hepburn and James Stewart, often with some of the biggest female stars of the day. These films are frequently cited among the greatest comedy films of all time. Other well-known films in which he starred in this period were the adventure Gunga Din (1939) and the dark comedy Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). He also began to move into dramas such as Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Penny Serenade (1941) and Clifford Odets' None but the Lonely Heart (1944); he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the latter two.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Grant developed a close working relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast the popular actor in several of his critically acclaimed films, including Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), and North by Northwest (1959). The suspense-dramas Suspicion and Notorious both involved Grant showing a darker, more ambiguous nature in his characters. Toward the end of his film career, Grant was praised by critics as a romantic leading man, and he received five nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, including Indiscreet (1958) with Ingrid Bergman, That Touch of Mink (1962) with Doris Day, and Charade (1963) with Audrey Hepburn. He is remembered by critics for his unusually broad appeal as a handsome, suave actor who did not take himself too seriously, able to play with his own dignity in comedies without sacrificing it entirely.
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William Gargan, born William Dennis Gargan July 17, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, USA and died February 17, 1979 aged 73 on a flight between New York and San Diego.
He was an American motion picture, television and radio actor. Gargan played character roles in many Hollywood productions, including two appearances as detective Ellery Queen, but was best known for his role as Detective Martin Kane in the 1949-51 radio-television series, Martin Kane, Private Eye, sponsored by U.S. Tobacco. He also appeared as a private detective in the NBC radio show Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, which ran from 1951 to 1955.
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Douglass Rupert Dumbrille (October 13, 1889 – April 2, 1974) was a Canadian actor and one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood.
In 1913, the East Coast film industry was flourishing and that year he appeared in the film What Eighty Million Women Want, but it would be another 11 years before he appeared on screen again.
In 1924, he made his Broadway debut and worked off and on in the theatre for several years while supplementing his income by selling such products as car accessories, tea, insurance, real estate, and books.
During the Great Depression, Dumbrille moved to the West Coast of the U.S., where he specialized in playing secondary character roles alongside the great stars of the day. His physical appearance and suave voice equipped him for roles as slick politician, corrupt businessman, crooked sheriff, or unscrupulous lawyer.
He was highly regarded by the studios and was sought out by Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Capra, Hal Roach and other prominent Hollywood filmmakers. A friend of fellow Canadian-born director Allan Dwan, Dumbrille played Athos in Dwan’s 1939 adaptation of The Three Musketeers.
Dumbrille had roles in more than 200 motion pictures and, with the advent of television, made numerous appearances in the 1950s and 1960s. He had the ability to project a balance of menace and pomposity in roles as the "heavy" in comedy films, such as those of the Marx Brothers or Abbott and Costello.
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Cecil Cunningham (August 2, 1888 – April 17, 1959) was an American film and stage actress. With whitish hair cut like a man's, she was a Hollywood character actress, often cast in roles as a general "know-it-all". She made more than 80 appearances in movies between 1929 and 1946, many of them uncredited.
Cunningham started her working life as a switchboard operator in a commerce bank and did some sittings as a photographer's model. Her first show business job was in the chorus line of 'Mademoiselle Modiste' at the age of eighteen. Cunningham trained as a singer and appeared in opera. She worked as a vaudeville comedian at the Palace Theatre in New York City until the commencement of her movie career in 1929.
Gary Cooper (May 7, 1901 - May 13, 1961) was an American film actor known for his natural, authentic, and understated acting style and screen performances. His career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in eighty-four feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres. Cooper's ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Maurice Auguste Chevalier (September 12, 1888 – January 1, 1972) was a French actor, cabaret singer and entertainer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including "Livin' In The Sunlight", "Valentine", "Louise", "Mimi", and "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" and for his films, including The Love Parade, The Big Pond, The Smiling Lieutenant, One Hour with You and Love Me Tonight. His trademark attire was a boater hat and tuxedo.
Chevalier was born in Paris. He made his name as a star of musical comedy, appearing in public as a singer and dancer at an early age before working in menial jobs as a teenager. In 1909, he became the partner of the biggest female star in France at the time, Fréhel. Although their relationship was brief, she secured him his first major engagement, as a mimic and a singer in l'Alcazar in Marseille, for which he received critical acclaim by French theatre critics. In 1917, he discovered jazz and ragtime and went to London, where he found new success at the Palace Theatre.
After this, he toured the United States, where he met the American composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and brought the operetta Dédé to Broadway in 1922. He developed an interest in acting and had success in Dédé. When talkies arrived, he went to Hollywood in 1928, where he played his first American role in Innocents of Paris. In 1930, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in The Love Parade (1929) and The Big Pond (1930), which secured his first big American hits, "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" and "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight".
In 1957, he appeared in Love in the Afternoon, which was his first Hollywood film in more than 20 years. In 1958, he starred with Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan in Gigi. In the early 1960s, he made eight films, including Can-Can in 1960 and Fanny the following year. In 1970, he made his final contribution to the film industry where he sang the title song of the Disney film The Aristocats.
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Virginia Bruce (September 29, 1910 – February 24, 1982) was an American actress and singer.
Born Helen Virginia Briggs in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1928, she moved with her family to Los Angeles intending to enroll in the University of California, Los Angeles when a friendly wager sent her seeking film work. She got it as an extra in Why Bring That Up?. In 1930 she appeared on Broadway in the musical Smiles, followed by America's Sweetheart in 1931.
She returned to Hollywood in 1932, where on August 10, 1932, she married John Gilbert, her co-star in the film Downstairs. She retired briefly after the birth of their daughter Susan Ann Gilbert. The couple divorced in 1934, and Virginia returned to a hectic schedule of film appearances. Gilbert died two years later in 1936.
Bruce introduced the Cole Porter standard "I've Got You Under My Skin" in the film Born to Dance and co-starred in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical The Great Ziegfeld. One of her final film appearances was in Strangers When We Meet.
In 1949, Bruce starred in a daily 30-minute radio drama. Make Believe Town was an afternoon program on CBS.
Bruce married her second husband, film director J. Walter Ruben, in 1937, making the Wallace Beery western The Bad Man of Brimstone with him that year. Together they had a son named Christopher (b. 1941), before Ruben's death in 1942. In 1946, Bruce married Ali Ipar. They divorced in 1951 in order for him to receive a commission in the Turkish Military (which forbade promotions of men married to foreigners), but remarried in 1952 before divorcing again in 1964.
Bruce died of cancer on February 24, 1982, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. She was 71.
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Charles Bickford (January 1, 1891 – November 9, 1967) was an American actor best known for his supporting roles. He was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Farmer's Daughter (1947), and Johnny Belinda (1948). Other notable roles include Whirlpool (1948), A Star is Born (1954) and The Big Country (1958).
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John Sidney Blyth Barrymore (February 15, 1882 – May 29, 1942) was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III. His success continued with motion pictures in various genres in both the silent and sound eras. Barrymore's personal life has been the subject of much writing before and since his passing in 1942. Today John Barrymore is mostly known for his roles in movies like Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1920), Grand Hotel (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Twentieth Century (1934), and Don Juan (1926), the first ever movie to use a Vitaphone soundtrack.
A member of a multi-generation theatrical dynasty, he was the brother of Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore, and was the paternal grandfather of Drew Barrymore.
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Lionel Barrymore (born Lionel Herbert Blythe; April 28, 1878 – November 15, 1954) was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul (1931), and remains best known to modern audiences for the role of villainous Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. He is also particularly remembered as Ebenezer Scrooge in annual broadcasts of A Christmas Carol during his last two decades. He is also known for playing Dr. Leonard Gillespie in MGM's nine Dr. Kildare films, a role he reprised in a further six films focussing solely on Gillespie and in a radio series entitled The Story of Dr. Kildare. He was a member of the theatrical Barrymore family.
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Wallace Fitzgerald Beery (April 1, 1885 – April 15, 1949) was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, his titular role in a series of films featuring the character Sweedie, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 movies over a 36-year span. He was the brother of actor Noah Berry.
