Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 102 of 108

Julie London

Julie London obituary in “The Guardian”.

To-day Julie London is primarily known as a singer. Her recording of “Cry Me A River” is a definite classic. She did also make some fine films. She was born in 1926 in Santa Rosa, California. One of her first major film parts was in “The Red House” in 1947. Her other films of interest were mainly Western e.g. “Man of the West” with Gary Cooper and “Saddle the Wind” with Robert Taylor and John Cassavettes, both films were released in 1958. Julie London also starred in the television series “Emergency” from 1972 until 1979 with her husband Bobby Troup. Julie London died in 2000 at the age of 74.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary of Julie London:

One of the most evocative sounds of the mid- to late-1950s, issuing from juke boxes, radios and film soundtracks, was the sexy, whispering voice of Julie London, who has died aged 74. Her own view was that she had “only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.”

London’s biggest hit was her first single, Cry Me A River, which was released in 1955, included on her first album, Julie Is Her Name, and sold more than 3m copies. Her voluptuous features on the album cover were described by publicists as “generating enough voltage to light up a theatre marquee”.

Similarly, the cover of her Calendar Girl album featured 12 glamorous shots, and, for her 1961 album, Whatever Julie Wants, she was guarded by armed security men as she posed beside $750,000 worth of furs, jewels and piles of money. In her movies, she looked her best in period costume, especially in westerns, where she decorated many a saloon bar.

London was born Julie Peck in California. Her parents, Jack and Josephine, were a vaudeville song-and-dance team, on whose radio show their daughter sang from an early age. In 1941, the family moved to Los Angeles, and, while working as a lift operator in a department store, Julie was discovered by talent agent Sue Carol, Alan Ladd’s wife, and given a screen test.

Her first role, at 18, was as a jungle girl – with flowers in her blonde hair – in the risible Nabonga (1944), whose best friend was the eponymous gorilla, until handsome Buster Crabbe showed up. London acquitted herself well, but the cheapie picture did not lead to big film roles. Meanwhile, however, she was making a reputation as a singer with the Matty Malnech Orchestra.

In 1947, she married the actor Jack Webb, later famous on the radio and television police series, Dragnet, and worked only a little while bringing up their two daughters. She had a good part as Susan Hayward’s amorous younger sister in the southern saga, Tap Roots (1948), and played a navy wife in Task Force (1949), starring Gary Cooper.

After she divorced Webb in 1953, London entered a brief period during which, in her own words, she lacked self-confidence. This changed when she met jazz musician and songwriter Bobby Troup, who guided her singing career and helped her become a top female vocalist from 1955 to 1957. The couple married in 1959, and had a daughter and twin sons.

Troup once remarked: “She is not a Julie London fan. She honestly doesn’t realise how good she is. She’s never really been a performer, she doesn’t have that need to go out and please an audience and receive accolades. She’s always been withdrawn, very introverted. She hated those big shows.”

However, London continued to sing in nightclubs, cut discs, and record title songs from her films, such as Saddle The Wind (1958) and Voice In The Mirror (1958), which she also composed. In the latter, she showed growing maturity as an actress, playing the wife of an alcoholic.

As a dancehall singer, humiliated and raped by Lee J Cobb, then avenged by Gary Cooper, in Anthony Mann’s allegorical Man Of The West (1959), she struck a tragic note. In The Wonderful Country (1959), she was won by Robert Mitchum after her husband had conveniently been killed by Apaches, and, in Night Of The Quarter Moon (1959), she shocked San Francisco society when, as John Drew Barrymore’s bride, she admitted to having a black grandparent.

In 1972, having been out of the public eye for some time, London began her role as Nurse Dixie McCall in the television hospital series, Emergency. The show, which was produced and often directed by her first husband Webb, also starred her second husband, Troup. For five years, London was a star once more, reminding fans of the days when, to quote the writer Joseph Lanza, she “was a blend of Dionysian flesh and Detroit steel, streamlined car and cocktail shaker combined”.

• Julie London, actress-singer, born September 26 1926; died October 18 2000

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Julie London (1926–2000) was a singular figure in mid-century entertainment, successfully maintaining a “triple-threat” career as a pin-up icon, a world-class jazz vocalist, and a prolific television actress. Her career was defined by a paradox: she projected an image of cool, effortless sexuality while remaining, by all accounts, a shy, introverted woman who viewed her fame with a sense of detached amusement.

I. Career Overview: The Three Acts

1. The Pin-Up and Starlet (1940s)

Discovered as an elevator operator at 17, London’s initial fame was visual.

WWII Icon: Her photographs in Esquire made her one of the most popular pin-up girls for GIs.
Early Film: She debuted in the “jungle cheapie” Nabonga (1944) but quickly moved to more substantial work in The Red House (1947). During this time, she married Jack Webb, later the creator of Dragnet.

2. The Liberty Records Era (1955–1969)

Following her divorce from Webb, musician Bobby Troup (who later became her second husband) convinced a reluctant London to record.

The “River” That Never Ends: Her debut single, “Cry Me a River” (1955), was a massive hit. Recorded with just a guitar (Barney Kessel) and bass, it established her “intimate” sound.
Prolific Output: She recorded 32 albums for Liberty Records, becoming the label’s cornerstone artist. Her album covers—which featured her in various states of glamorous repose—were as famous as the music itself.

3. The Television “Emergency!” (1972–1979)

In a rare Hollywood twist, her ex-husband Jack Webb hired both London and her husband Bobby Troup for the hit medical drama Emergency!.

Nurse Dixie McCall: London played the head nurse of Rampart General Hospital. Her performance was a total departure from her “sex symbol” image, portraying a no-nonsense, highly competent professional.

II. Detailed Critical Analysis

1. The “Thimbleful of Voice”: Musical Minimalism

London famously described her own singing as a “thimbleful of a voice.”

The Micro-Vocalist: Critically, London is considered a pioneer of microphone technique. Because she couldn’t project loudly, she sang directly into the mic, turning her “limitations” into a strength. This created a “breathier” sound that made the listener feel as if she were whispering directly into their ear.
Jazz Sensitivity: Unlike the “belters” of her era, London was a master of understatement. She rarely used vibrato, preferring a straight, “languid” tone that aligned perfectly with the “Cool Jazz” movement of the 1950s.

2. Branding the “Sultry” Image

London’s career is a case study in visual marketing.

The Cover Girl: Her record covers were strategically designed to sell “intimacy.” Whether it was Julie Is Her Name or Calendar Girl, the branding created a “dream girl” persona that was often at odds with her private, domestic reality.
Authenticity vs. Persona: Critics often note the contrast between her “seductress” image and her “pedestrian” acting technique. Her charm lay in her apparent indifference to her own beauty; she never seemed to be “trying” to be sexy, which made her all the more alluring.

3. The “Western” Dramatist

While her early films were often forgettable, her work in the late 50s Westerns—particularly Man of the West(1958) and The Wonderful Country (1959)—showed a maturing dramatic range.

The Tragic Note: In Man of the West, her character (Billie Ellis) is subjected to brutal humiliation. Critics praised her for playing the role with a “tragic dignity” that avoided the usual clichés of the Western “saloon girl

William Eythe had a rather short career as a leading man in Hollywood films of the 1940’s. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1918. His first film was “The Ox-Bow Incident” in 1943 with Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews. He then starred opposite Jennifer Jones in the hughly popular “Song of Bernadette”. His other films of note include the excellent film noir “The House on 92nd Street” and “Meet Me at Dawn”. In 1947 he returned to the stage and died in 1957 at the age of 38.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

He had the requisite charm and dark, thick-browed good-looks of a Tyrone Power that often spelled “film stardom” but it was not to be in the case of actor William Eythe. Spotted for Hollywood while performing on Broadway, he made nary a dent when he finally transferred his skills to film and is little remembered today. Outgoing in real life, he never found his full range in film and a certain staidness behind the charm and good looks prohibited him from standing out among the other high-ranking leading men. Like Power, his untimely death robbed filmgoers of seeing what kind of a character actor he might have made.

Born William John Joseph Eythe on April 7, 1918, in a small dairy town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was the son of a contractor. Developing an early interest in theatrics after appearing in an elementary school play, he put on his own shows as an amateur producer/director. Following high school he applied to the School of Drama at Carnegie Tech where he initially focused on set design and costuming due to a stammering problem (it was corrected while there). He also produced some of the school’s musicals in which he also wrote the songs. Graduating from college in 1941, he began leaning towards a professional music theater and started involving himself in musicals and revues in the Pittsburgh era. He appeared in various stock shows in other states as well, including the “borscht circuit”, while radio work in the form of announcing came his way. Following a failed attempt at forming his own stock company, he was discovered by a 20th Century-Fox talent scout while performing impressively on Broadway in “The Moon Is Down” and moved west when the show closed in the summer of ’42.

Benefiting from the fact that many major Hollywood male stars were actively serving in WWII, Eythe. who had “4-F status, was handed an enviable film debut as the wavering son of a lynch mob member in the superb The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). More quality films ensued with The Song of Bernadette (1943) and Wilson (1944) although he didn’t have much of a chance to shine. He received his best Hollywood top-lining assignments as the rural WWII soldier who has telepathic capabilities in The Eve of St. Mark (1944) and as a German-American double agent in the taut espionage drama The House on 92nd Street(1945). When Fox star Tyrone Power turned down the lead role opposite Tallulah Bankhead in the plush costumer A Royal Scandal (1945), Eythe inherited the part. Naturally Tallulah’s histrionics dominated the proceedings and Eythe, though sincere and quite photogenic, was completely overlooked. This happened in other movies as well, and while he was a talented singer/dancer, the only musical film he ever appeared in required minor singing in Centennial Summer (1946). Adding insult to injury, he was dubbed.

Eythe never conformed easily to the strictest of rules that studio head Darryl F. Zanuckimposed and it proved a detriment to his career in the long run. He was either suspended or (in one case) farmed out to England to do a “B” film as punishment for his rebellious nature. A close “friendship” with fellow actor Lon McCallister had to be carefully dampened, and, out of concern, an impulsive marriage in 1947 to socialite and Fox starlet Buff Cobb was the result. It may have ended rumors for a spell but, not unsurprisingly, the couple divorced a little over a year later. Ms. Cobb later married veteran TV newsman Mike Wallace.

In the post-war years, Fox began to lose interest and Eythe was seen with less frequency. He flatlined film-wise in his last two “C” movies that were made by other studios: Special Agent (1949) and Customs Agent (1950). To compensate for the waning of interest, he formed his own production company and appeared on stage in such fare as “The Glass Menagerie” in the showy role of son Tom. He also enjoyed seeing one of his early revues, “Lend an Ear”, revamped by Charles Gaynor and given a Broadway run in 1948. Eythe was one of the show’s producers and singing stars. The musical is best remembered for putting co-star Carol Channing on the map. In addition, Eythe replaced baritone Alfred Drake in “The Liar” a couple of years later. In 1956 he and McAllister, along with Huntington Hartford, produced a musical revue with the hopes of it reaching Broadway but it closed in Chicago. Uninspired TV work did little to alter his decline.

Depression eventually set in and he turned heavily to drink with an unfortunate series of tabloid-making arrests resulting. His health in rapid deterioration, he was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital one day for treatment of acute hepatitis and died ten days later, at age 38, on January 26, 1957. For someone so promising, his untimely death merely left another tainted impression of the downside to Hollywood stardom.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Burl Ives was a wonderful folk singer. Two of his songs, “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “The Old Woman Who Swallowed the Fly” have become children favourites. He was too a very effective actor who won an Academy Award for his performance in “The Big Country” in 1958. He was born in 1909 in Hunt City in Illinois. He had developed a neat reputation as a singer when he made his first film “Smoky” in 1946. His major films include “East of Eden”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. “Let No Man Write My Epitaph”, “The Spiral Road” and “Summer Magic”. He died in 1995 at the age of 85.

David Shipman’s obituary of Burl Ives in “The Independent”:

n 1938 20th Century-Fox had a success with the tale of two feuding families of racehorse owners, Kentucky, one of the few Technicolor films of the time to find wide popularity. Fox liked horse stories in colour and after the success of My Friend Flicka (1943) began to churn them out. One of the 1946 entries, Smoky, has a special credit, “And introducing the Singing Troubadour Burl Ives”: there he is, strumming away on his guitar, cheerfully singing his hits to chums round a Fordian campfire – “The Streets of Laredo”, “I Wish I Was An Apple Tree”, “The Foggy Foggy Dew”, and “The Blue Tail Fly” (“Jimmie Crack Corn”).

The voice was high, reedy, but warm and mellow, caressing the often nonsensical lyrics as intimately as anyone approaching the wit of Lorenz Hart or Cole Porter. Ives seldom sang songs of their quality, but like all the great singers he resembled no one but himself.

A former professional footballer and itinerant worker, Ives was fascinated by folk-songs, researching them and singing them for records, radio and night-clubs. The ballads in Smoky were not unknown in Britain but, since the film hardly started a stampede to the box-office, Ives’s recordings took a while to get off the ground here. In particular, “The Blue Tail Fly” and “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” became popular in the mid-Fifties – while Ives was simultaneously making a career as a character actor in movies.

His identification with folk singing began after he had been in show business for some time. In Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys From Syracuse (1938) he had a small part as tailor’s apprentice, and during the Second World War he sang “God Bless America” and Irving Berlin songs in the touring company of This is the Army. In 1944 he was invited to appear at the Village Vanguard, a night-club frequented by middle-class intellectuals. It had just had a great success with a satirical group, “The Revuers”, whom we know as Judy Holliday, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Rather than trying to find similar acts, the Vanguard followed with Ives, Josh White, Richard Dyer-Bennett and other folk-singers: and it could be argued that the smart people of Manhattan were looking for the sort of Americana with which they were not familiar.

Certainly these performers all moved uptown to the Blue Angel, the watering- place for caf society in the late 1940s. In the meantime Ives was cast in a Broadway show, Sing Out, Sweet Land (1946), a celebration of old and/or patriotic songs to reflect the post-war mood – and the more folksy ones appealed to Fox, who invited Ives to reprise some of his in order to liven up its otherwise mundane horse opera.

He returned to the studio to help out another of this seemingly interminable series, Green Grass of Wyoming (1948), after which Walt Disney chose him to play kindly Uncle Hiram in So Dear to My Heart (1949), based on Sterling North’s novel Midnight and Jeremiah, about a boy who adopts a black sheep. Disney’s child star, Bobby Driscoll (later to die an anonymous drug addict in an untenanted building), was Jeremiah, while as his granny Beulah Bondi was as sympathetic as Ives – who sang a ditty based on a folk-song, “Lavender Blue”, which brought an Academy Award nomination for its two adaptors.

Ives did not restrict himself to old songs, but chose many, such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, which suited his avuncular down-home image. It was not entirely in keeping with the private Ives.

Sing Out, Sweet Land was the first production directed by the drama critic Walter Kerr, who in his inexperience called in Elia Kazan for assistance. Kazan, who enjoyed Ives’s larger-than-life personality, nevertheless recalled seeing him “drunk one night, macho and rampant, aroused to a point where he was looking for a fight, anywhere and with anybody. He was a formidable man, with a frightening temper; he evoked respect for his violence. Late one night, soused again, he reversed his emotion and I was afraid that he was about to throw himself out of a window.”

Ives, whose left-wing views were well-known, gave evidence to the committee at the McCarthy hearings – as did Kazan, Budd Shulberg and others, though only Kazan was to remain in contumely for a long time. He was also the most famous of those who confessed and continued to work; Ives’s budding film career was blighted till Kazan chose him to play the tough but understanding sheriff who takes James Dean under his wing in East of Eden (1955); then, remembering his ferocity and contempt for good manners, he cast him as the red-necked bullying Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

It was a bravura role with a pages-long tirade, and Williams wasn’t sure that Ives could do it, but Kazan knew that he could – “straight out: that was where he had the confidence born of his concert experience, that was the style of performing that he – and I – enjoyed.” Williams, who had based the role on his own father, told Ives that “on opening night he sat in the 14th row and saw Cornelius Williams”.

The role revitalised Ives’s career. He was offered night-club engagements in the sort of territory then unknown for folk-singers, Las Vegas – though by now he was less of a folk archivist than an entertainer courting the widest popular public. He returned to films in star roles, all based to an extent on Big Daddy, beginning with the ruthless and monomaniacal company president in a Robert Taylor vehicle, The Power and the Prize (1956). He was top-billed as the renegade leader of the Swamp Angels in Wind across the Everglades (1958), directed by Nicholas Ray and produced and written by Budd Shulberg. Admittedly his co-stars, Christopher Plummer and Gypsy Rose Lee, were not household names; and he was billed after Sophia Loren and Anthony Perkins in Delbert Mann’s version of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire under the Elms. Since Loren, as the new wife, and Perkins, as the son who cuckolds him, were both miscast, Ives seems to have hoped to get through the ordeal with one hangdog expression.

Although Kazan chose not to direct the film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Richard Brooks did – Ives was the only possible choice for Big Daddy, but he was not nominated for an Oscar because MGM insisted that he should be shortlisted for Best Actor. More realistically, United Artists put him up for a Best Supporting Oscar in William Wyler’s The Big Country, in which he played a white-trash land baron at war with the more likeable Charles Bickford. When he won that Oscar the Hollywood Reporter somewhat cruelly referred to the film as “Big Daddy Goes West”. He was a mysterious refugee from Hitler in Our Man in Havana (1959), directed by Carol Reed from a Graham Greene screenplay (from his own novel), which with those two films is the highwater mark of Ives’s career.

Burl Ives was equally convincing whether nice or nasty, but both his rotund figure and his age – not to mention an unkempt goatee – fitted him only for character roles. Those assigned him in later movies were not distinguished, and he was better served by films and mini-series made for television. Ill-health had prevented him from working in recent years.

Although not to everybody’s taste, the pretty modern ditties he recorded should be around for a while yet. He had a hit parade entry in the early Sixties with “Itty Bitty Tear” and again with “The Ugly Bug Ball”, which he had sung in his role of the postmaster in Summer Magic (1963), based on Mother Carey’s Chickens by Kate Douglas Wiggins. The song was written by Richard and Robert Sherman, then warming up for Mary Poppins. The film brought Ives’s career full circle, for the lead was played by the only other genuine Disney child star – apart from Master Driscoll – Hayley Mills.

David Shipman

The above “Independent” obituary can be accessed online here.

Picturegoer’ once observed that Dorothy McGuire belonged to that coterie of players – it includes Margaret Sullavan, Betty Field, Martha Scott and Barbara Bel Geddes – whose charm is uncommon, elusive. It is the charm of … frank unpretty features that can for some at times take on an amazing beauty. In other words, they were not the sort of Hollywood girl you would discover at the soda fountain in a drugstore. They all came from the stage. They were all highly rated by the critics and by the top Hollywood brass, at least at first. None of them had a prolific screen career. One might speculate on the reasons – lack of drive or determination, dislike of type-casting or Hollywood or a combination of any of them. Being most of them very talented ladies, they were individual in style, but ‘Picturegoer’ was right. Sullavan played a tempestuous movie queen once and Field, memorably, a slut. One thinks of them as very gentle and genteel heroines” – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars- The International Years”. (1972).

“‘P

Dorothy McGuire was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1916. She had a triumph on Broadway in the title role in “Claudia” an role that she recreated on film in 1943. A gentle, sensitive actress she excelled in mother roles where her kindly nature shone. Her major film roles include “The Enchanted Cottage” with Robert Young, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” in 1945, “The Spiral Staircase”, “Gentleman’s Agreement”, “Three Coins in the Fountain”, “Friendly Persuasion with Gary Cooper and Anthony Perkins, “Old Yeller”, “A Summer Place” with Troy Donahue in 1959, “Swiss Family Robinson”, “Susan Slade” and “Flight of the Doves”. She starred on television in the series “Rich Man, Poor Man” in 1975. Dorothy McGuire died in 2001 at the age of 85.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

The image of Dorothy McGuire, who has died aged 83, remained almost the same throughout her 20 years as a movie star. Her persona – on screen and off – was that of an attractive woman of integrity, intelligence and charm, and it imbued the series of loving sweethearts, faithful wives and doting mothers whom she played so sympathetically.

The producer Darryl F Zanuck called her an “angel”, which, according to Elia Kazan, robbed her of her sexuality. She certainly had little chance to exude either sexuality or be malicious, like Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, but there was always room for an actor who was so good at being good.

McGuire’s first screen appearance was in the title role of Claudia (1943), which she had played to acclaim two years earlier on Broadway, receiving the New York critics’ circle award. She was chosen for the role – that of a child woman, too immature to be a wife until a family tragedy shocks her into adulthood – from 200 applicants by the Broadway producer John Golden because “she had a fresh, wind-blown quality and an impressive, though subdued, personality”.

Born to well-off parents in Omaha, Nebraska, at school McGuire wrote plays, directed and acted in them, and joined the Omaha Community Playhouse, where, at the age of 12, she took the lead in JM Barrie’s A Kiss For Cinderella – opposite the 25-year-old Henry Fonda. Her lawyer- father wired her on opening night: “Let your head touch the stars, but keep your feet on the ground.” This caveat characterised her way of life.

In 1937, she left college to concentrate on acting. After doing the rounds in New York, she got a job understudying Martha Scott in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, taking over the part in July 1938, proving lovely and vibrant with emotion as a young girl who dies prematurely after her marriage. She then went into a popular radio soap opera, Big Sister, and toured in plays before landing the role of Claudia, which led to David O Selznick offering her a seven-year film contract. During the Broadway run of Claudia, McGuire married the photographer John Swope.

Wanting to get away from what she called, the “ingenue flutter” of Claudia, she played the poverty-stricken wife of a drunken waiter in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1944), Kazan’s first picture. This was followed by The Enchanted Cottage (1945), in which she was touching as a lonely, plain woman married to an embittered, disfigured first world war veteran (Robert Young).

Better still was Robert Siodmak’s chiller, The Spiral Staircase (1945), in which McGuire played a mute servant girl living in fear of being murdered by a maniac. She showed how the layers of trust peeled away from an intrinsically sunny- dispositioned young woman.

In Edward Dmytryk’s post-war readjustment drama, Till The End Of Time (1946), McGuire was perfect as a confused and lonely war widow in love with ex-Marine Guy Madison. Kazan’s Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) saw her nominated for an Oscar for her role as a socialite divorcee who believes she is free from anti-semitism until her journalist fiance (Gregory Peck) has to pose as a Jew for a series of articles.

Around the same time, with Peck, Jennifer Jones, Mel Ferrer and Joseph Cotten, McGuire formed the La Jolla Playhouse Group, for which she appeared in The Importance Of Being Earnest, I Am A Camera and The Winslow Boy. She returned to Broadway in 1951 as the Actor opposite Richard Burton’s Musician in Jean Anouilh’s Legend Of Lovers. In the 1950s, her roles on screen were mostly unchallenging, as in Three Coins In The Fountain (1954).

Her best film of the decade was William Wyler’s Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which she played a warm-hearted Quaker wife trying to prevent her husband (Gary Cooper) and son (Anthony Perkins) from fighting in the American civil war.

She had now found a niche playing ideal mothers: the Texas frontier mother in Old Yeller (1957); the mother of eight – taking care of Clifton Webb’s nine as well – in The Remarkable Mr Pennypacker (1959); the practical, shipwrecked mother in The Swiss Family Robinson (1960); the mother in a loveless marriage in The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs (1960); and the protective mothers of teen- agers Troy Donahue, in A Summer Place (1960), Connie Stevens in Susan Slade (1961) and Hayley Mills in Summer Magic (1963). This run of mothers culminated in the role of the Virgin Mary in George Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

As the film offers dwindled in the 1970s, McGuire was seen more in the theatre, notably in Tennessee Williams’s Night Of The Iguana and Terence Rattigan’s Cause Celebre in 1979, the year her husband died. After three years of not working, she returned to Broadway in the play Winesburg, Ohio, as glowingly reassuring as ever.

She is survived by her daughter and son.

•Dorothy McGuire, actor, born June 14 1918; died September 13 2001

“The Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Rosenda Monertos was born in 1935 in Veracruz, Mexico. Her first film was “A Woman’s Devotion” in 1956. She was the leading lady in the classic “The Magnificent Seven” with Yul Brynner and Horst Buchholz. Her other films include “Thiara Tahiti” in 1962 with John Mills and James Mason. Ms Monteros died in 2018.

New York Times obituary in 2018:

Rosenda Monteros, a Mexican actress remembered for her turn as one of the few women in John Sturges’s classic western “The Magnificent Seven,” died on Dec. 29 at her home in Mexico.

A spokeswoman for her family, who is also a representative for the National Theater Company of Mexico, said the cause was pelvic cancer. The spokeswoman said Ms. Monteros was 86, although according to Spanish-language news media accounts and other sources she was 83.

Ms. Monteros, a successful actress in Mexican theater, films and television for more than five decades, played a small but important part in “The Magnificent Seven,” the 1960 remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film “Seven Samurai.” In the Hollywood version, seven gunslingers are hired by local farmers to defend their Mexican village from bandits.

The movie had an all-star cast, with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholz, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter and James Coburn as the seven gunmen and Eli Wallach as the leader of the bandits. The film featured a stirring and now instantly recognizable theme, composed by Elmer Bernstein.

Ms. Monteros’s character, Petra, goes into hiding with the other women in the village when the gunmen arrive, but she is soon discovered. Bolder than many of the villagers, she pursues a romance with Mr. Buchholz’s character, the temperamental Chico.

“I wasn’t afraid of you — it’s my father,” Petra says to Chico in one scene. “He says stay away from those men, they are brutes, they are cruel.”

“He’s right, you know that?” Chico replies. “He’s right.”

Their courtship is the only romantic thread in that testosterone-fueled film, and her part is one of the biggest among its Mexican actors.

“The Magnificent Seven” was shot in Mexico, where a government censor kept a close eye on the production to make sure that Mexicans were depicted positively. Mr. Sturges told The New York Times in 1960 that the censor was “an autocrat” who operated “on the theory that anything debatable should be stricken out.”

Mr. Sturges took note of one major change to the script: Instead of setting out to hire American fighters from the start, the farmers tried to buy guns for themselves.

The changes angered Mr. Sturges, but Ms. Monteros, interviewed in the documentary “Guns for Hire: The Making of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ ” (2000), was more philosophical.

“The script had to be checked and revised very carefully to make sure that there were no images that denigrated the country,” she said. “Because of the importance of the coproduction, we had to get the film off the ground one way or another. It was good for the country.”

Rosa Méndez Leza was born in Veracruz, Mexico, on Aug. 31, in either 1932 or 1935. She was active in Mexican theater from a young age and moved to Mexico City when she was 17. She also performed in Europe, where she studied mime and performed with Marcel Marceau.

Her marriage to the director Julio Bracho ended in divorce. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

Ms. Monteros’s other films included Luis Buñuel’s “Nazarin” (1959); “Tiara Tahiti” (1962), which starred James Mason; and “Cauldron of Blood” (1970), which starred Boris Karloff in one of his last roles. On television, she had a long-running part in the telenovela “Lucía Sombra.”

Information on survivors was not immediately available.

“The Magnificent Seven” is still beloved by western fans. It was remade by Antoine Fuqua in 2016, but without the character Petra and her romantic subplot

Cesar Romero was born in 1907 in New York to Cuban parents. He had a very lengthy and profilic career, his first film been “The Shadow Laughs” in 1933 and his last film performance was in 1988 in “Judgement Day”. Among his major films were “Springtime in the Rockies”, “Lady in Ermione”, “Captain from Castile” and “Lust in the Dust”. Cesar Romero died in 1994.

“Independent” obituary:

Caesar Julius Romero (Cesar Romero), actor: born New York City 15 February 1907; died Santa Monica, California 1 January 1994.

CESAR ROMERO was the most ubiquitous – and his career was the longest – of those actors who, starting with Valentino, were typecast as Latin lovers. This meant being suave and slick, as in one of his earliest films, The Thin Man (1934), when for a while audiences weren’t quite sure whether he was Minna Gombell’s husband or her gigolo. It was his appearance in the Broadway hit Dinner at Eight which had attracted the interest of the studios.

The world, then, was Hollywood’s oyster and, since he hardly looked like a red-blooded Grade-A American baseball player, Romero was cast as various foreigners, usually treacherous: an Indian nabob in Clive of India, a Russian prince spying for Germany in Rendezvous (both 1935). As a young French lover in Cardinal Richelieu, he was innocuous, and he was ludicrous as Marlene Dietrich’s true love in The Devil is a Woman (both 1935). She was ‘the toast of Spain . . . the most dangerous woman you’ll ever meet,’ says Lionel Atwill, at the same time so besotted with her that he refuses to cede her to the much younger Romero. Twentieth Century-Fox engaged Romero to play a notorious Indian chieftain in Wee Willie Winkie (1937) – which turned Kipling’s boy hero into Shirley Temple – and put him under contract. Over the next few years Fox had a number of female stars as popular as Miss Temple, including Sonja Henie, Loretta Young, Alice Faye and Betty Grable. The arrival of another, Carmen Miranda, called for stories set South of the Border. Romero’s days of villainy and paid love were over, with the bonus of his name sometimes above the title: but he was invariably the Other Man, the fall-guy, or best buddy to the hero or heroine.

He was also the Cisco Kid, a ‘lovable’, daredevil Mexican bandit first played by Warner Baxter in several early talkies. Fox resurrected him for Return of the Cisco Kid (1939), but the half-dozen films which followed – all Bs – provoked little interest. Romero looked better, however, in the Kid’s buttons and bows than in the white tie and tails, the tuxes and the bum-jackets which he usually sported. He was usually dressed as though escorting a pretty doll to a night-club because that was what he was usually doing. Fox gave him a rare taxing role in Captain from Castile (1947), as Cortez, and he was capable but hardly more. The star was Tyrone Power, with whom Romero was said to have had a long-standing romance. In studio parlance, Romero was ‘a confirmed bachelor’.

When the studio system broke up in the early 1950s Romero’s familiarity as a character actor was strong enough to keep him in work over the next 30 years. His career received a fillip when he played the Joker in the television series Batman, and he reprised it in the 1966 movie which capitalised on its popularity. In recent years, looking distinguished with white hair and his trim trademark moustache, he was often to be found introducing his films on American television and reminiscing about their stars. Very often, in fact, since there were few with whom he had not worked.

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Barry Nelson has the distinction of been the first James Bond on celluloid, even if it was television. He was born in 1917 in San Francisco. During his military service during World Ward Two, he made his Broadway debut in Moss Hart’s “Winged Victory” and followed this up with “Light Up the Sky”. His movie debut had been in 1941 in “Shadow of the Thin Man” and this was followed by “A Yank on the Burma Road

, “The Human Comedy”, “Airport” and “The Shining”. Barry Nelson died in 2007 at the age of 90.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

A genial, well-respected, all-around “nice guy”, the breezily handsome Barry Nelson was born Robert Haakon Nielsen on April 16, 1917, in San Francisco, California, of Scandinavian heritage. He was raised in nearby Oakland and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1941. A talent scout from MGM caught Barry in a college production of “Macbeth” and quickly sized up his potential. Cast in earnest secondary roles including Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) and Dr. Kildare’s Victory (1942), he was assigned the lead in the war film A Yank on the Burma Road (1942). Serving in WWII, he appeared in the Moss Hart play “Winged Victory”, in what would become his Broadway debut, in 1943 and a year later he appeared as “Corporal Barry Nelson” in the 1944 film version of the play. Barry lost major ground in films during the post-war years, but certainly made up for it on the live stage by appearing in a string of New York successes ranging from “The Rat Race” to “The Moon Is Blue.”

On TV, in addition to becoming a trivia statistic in the Hollywood annals as being the first to give video life to Ian Fleming‘s “007” agent James (“Jimmy”) Bond in a one-hour production of “Casino Royale” in 1954, Barry lit up the small screen in such dramatic programs as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) and, in particular, a memorable episode ofTwilight Zone (1959). He also starred in the series The Hunter (1952), a Cold War adventure, and My Favorite Husband (1953), in which he played the level-headed mate and “straight man” to daffy blonde Joan Caulfield. In the 1960s he continued to demonstrate his acting muscle on stage and TV, although he did manage to preserve on film his starring role in Mary, Mary (1963), a huge Broadway hit with Debbie Reynolds co-starring in place of stage partner Barbara Bel Geddes. The lightweight play “Cactus Flower” with Lauren Bacall was another bright vehicle, but star Walter Matthau‘s clout cost Barry the part when it went to film. Through it all Barry remained a thoroughly solid professional, particularly in the realm of TV-movies. Such standouts include his neighbor/undercover agent to criminals-on-the-run Don Murray and Inger Stevens in The Borgia Stick (1967) and his blind plane crash survivor in Seven in Darkness (1969).

The 1970s proved a very good decade indeed for Barry theater-wise with “Seascape,” “The Norman Conquests” and Liza Minnelli‘s “The Act” among his pleasures, the last-mentioned earning him a Tony nomination. Despite co-starring roles in the blockbuster hit Airport (1970) and comedy Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972), the silver screen would not become his strong suit in later years. By the early 1990s he had fully retired.

A popular, clean-cut, down-to-earth “Average Joe” with a charmingly sly side, you just couldn’t help but like Barry Nelson. Although he certainly could play the deceptive villain when called upon, he was usually the kind of guy you’d root for having as a neighbor, pal or business partner. Divorced from actress Teresa Celli for quite some time and completely retired now, he and second wife Nansilee (they married in 1992) traveled extensively and enjoyed antique shopping in particular. In 2007, during one of their many excursions, Barry passed away quietly at age 89 at a hotel in Bucks County, Pennesylvania.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Keep It Cool, poster, US poster, Barbara Ruick (top), Tony Pastor (bottom right), mid 1950s. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Barbara Ruick was born in 1930 in Pasadena, California. She was the daughter of actress Lurene Tuttle. She is prehaps best known for her role of Carrie Pipperidge in the film musical “Carousel” with Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones. Her other films include “Confidentially Connie” in 1953 and “The Affair of Dobie Gillis”. Barbara Ruick was married to the reknowned film composer John Williams. She died in 1974 at the young age of 44.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

A bundle of bright sunshine and unabashed energy, lovely musical actress Barbara Ruick delighted audiences for over two decades. The brown-eyed singer/actress who admittedly came up short in the dancing department nevertheless toyed with top musical stardom in mid-1950s films and almost nabbed it. A vivacious beauty whose sparkling, fresh-faced appeal reminded one instantly of a Mitzi Gaynor or Vera-Ellen, Barbara’s untimely death at age 41 robbed Hollywood of a tried-and-true talent.

She was born on December 23, 1930 in sunny Pasadena, California, the daughter of show biz professionals. Father Mel Ruick was a well respected radio actor and announcer while mother Lurene Tuttle earned equal distinction as a radio player and (later) reliable TV and film performer playing a lovely assortment of fluttery matrons and mothering types. Deeply influenced by her parents’ obvious success and fulfillment, the blonde and starry-eyed Barbara started acting on radio and TV as a Hollywood High School teenager. One of her first jobs was in the chorus of Chico Marx‘s TV show despite the fact she was a lackluster dancer.

Following other TV work, the just-turned-21 Barbara earned the attention of MGM and signed a long-term contract with the topnotch studio. She dutifully apprenticed in starlet parts with bit or unbilled roles in both musical and dramatic outings including Invitation(1952), Scaramouche (1952) and Fearless Fagan (1952). Slightly better parts were handed to her in the films You for Me (1952), Above and Beyond (1952) and Apache War Smoke (1952). The last movie mentioned co-starred future husband Robert Horton, known for his rugged appearances in numerous westerns. The twosome married in Las Vegas in 1953.

The next couple of years were quite frustrating for Barbara at MGM. After finally earning a second femme lead role in the film The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953) alongside Bobby Van, Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse, MGM inexplicably reverted her right back to playing bit parts again in such offerings as Confidentially Connie (1953), I Love Melvin (1953) and The Band Wagon (1953). She finally retreated from both MGM and Hollywood and returned to New York to concentrate on TV. She earned a slew of assignments including a number of variety show appearances. On series TV she was a bright and breezy regular for such stalwarts as Ezio Pinza, Jerry Colonna and Johnny Carson. She also proved her dramatic mettle on such programs as “The Loretta Young Show,” “The Public Defender” and “The Lineup”.

Out of nowhere Barbara was ushered back to Hollywood for the most important film role of her career. In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic Carousel (1956), it seemed that stardom was just within reach after winning the cute and flighty Carrie Piperidge role alongside Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones. Ruick shined in the well-mounted 20th Century-Fox production while offering a lovely rendition of “When I Marry Mr. Snow”. Instead of this success propelling Barbara into other films, it would be her last movie for nearly two decades. She also recorded for Columbia Records around this period but, other than a couple of novelty items, none of her songs ever made it to the top of the charts.

Divorced from actor Horton in 1956, Barbara married Academy Award-winning composer and Boston Pops conductor John Williams that same year. They had one daughter and two sons. The boys went on to have musical careers of their own; their daughter became a doctor. She continued to thrive on TV in the late 50s. In 1965 angular Barbara and plump Pat Carroll camped it up and nearly stole the proceedings as the evil stepsisters with their uproarious version of “The Stepsisters Lament” in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s star-studded musical special Cinderella (1965) starring Lesley Ann Warren.

Barbara was little seen in the ensuing years but did pop up for a small role as a barmaid in the comedy film California Split (1974) showcasing the then-hot film stars Elliott Gouldand George Segal. Barbara died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage on March 3, 1974 in Reno, Nevada. Although her musical gifts were shamefully underused by MGM in the early 1950s, her comeback role in Carousel (1956) will endure and remain a film treasure.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Anne Seymour was a formidable character actress who acted in Hollywood films from the 1940’s. She was born in 1909 in New York. Her great-uncle was the great character actor Harry Davenport. She made her movie debut in 1949 as Broderick Crawford’s wife in “All the King’s Men”. Her other films include “Home from the Hill” and “Field of Dreams”. She died in 1988.

Her IMDB entry:

The daughter of a copper expert (William Stanley Eckert) and an actress and museum curator (May Davenport), character actress Anne Seymour was born on September 11, 1909 in New York City. She was the seventh generation of a theatrical family that could be tracked back to Ireland in 1740. Her great-uncle was the popular character actor Harry Davenport and her two older brothers were writer James Seymour (42nd Street (1933)) and actor John Seymour (The Sporting Club (1971)).

Anne trained for the stage at the American Laboratory Theatre School with Richard Boleslawski and Maria Ouspenskaya, and began her career performing with The Jitney Players. She, as did her brothers, eventually changed her stage moniker from Eckert to her mother’s maiden name of Seymour. After touring throughout New England, Anne made her New York debut in Mr. Moneypenny in 1928. Other Broadway shows followed including At the Bottom (1930) and A School for Scandal (1931). The following year, she entered the world of radio drama. Her distinctively warm style and vocal timbre were perfect for playing some of radio’s noblest, self-sacrificing heroines. She portrayed “Mary Marlin” for 11 popular seasons; it turned out to be her most identifiable role.

In the late 1940s Anne switched to film and made an auspicious debut as Lucy Stark in the Oscar-winning picture All the King’s Men (1949). Although movie appearances would remain sporadic and relatively minor, Anne was a solid, capable player during the golden age of television and could be seen dressing up many glossy dramas, including Studio One in Hollywood (1948) and Robert Montgomery Presents (1950). Her rather hawkish, matronly features, which seemed in stark contrast to her smooth, modulated tones, nevertheless had her primarily playing benevolent roles as concerned relatives and professionals somewhat in the background.

In 1958, Anne earned strong marks for her portrayal of Sara Delano Roosevelt alongside Tony-winning Ralph Bellamy‘s FDR in “Sunrise at Campobello” on Broadway. She lost the 1960 movie role to Ann Shoemaker. Anne was actively involved on the SAG and AFTRA boards throughout a good portion of her career. Unmarried, she died in 1988 of natural causes after completing a small part in the popular film Field of Dreams (1989).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Her IMDB entry can also be accessed here

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Julie London

Julie London obituary in “The Guardian”.

I. Career Overview: The Three Acts

1. The Pin-Up and Starlet (1940s)

2. The Liberty Records Era (1955–1969)

3. The Television “Emergency!” (1972–1979)

II. Detailed Critical Analysis

1. The “Thimbleful of Voice”: Musical Minimalism

2. Branding the “Sultry” Image

3. The “Western” Dramatist

William Eythe

Burl Ives

Dorothy McGuire

Rosenda Monteros

New York Times obituary in 2018:

Cesar Romero

Barry Nelson

Barbara Ruick

Anne Seymour

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