Hollywood Actors Archives

Jill St John

Jill St. John. IMDB

Jill St John was born in 1940 in Los Angeles. She made her film debut in 1958 in “Summer Love” with John Saxon. Throughout the late 50’s and sixties, she made many films including “The Lost World”, “Tender Is the Night”, “The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone” and “Honeymoon Hotel”. In 1971 she played Tiffany Case in the popular James Bond movie “Diamonds Are Forever” and the following year was in “Sitting Target” with Oliver Reed, a gritty British thriller.Since the 1980’s she has acted intermittingly. She is married to actor Robert Wagner.

Her IMDB entry:

Jill St. John absolutely smoldered on the big screen, a trendy presence in lightweight comedy, spirited adventure and spy intrigue who appeared alongside some of Hollywood’s most handsome male specimens. Although she was not called upon to do much more than frolic in the sun and playfully taunt and tempt as needed, this tangerine-topped stunner managed to do her job very, very well.

A remarkably bright woman in real life, she was smart enough to play the Hollywood game to her advantage and did so for nearly two decades before looking elsewhere for fun and contentment. Jill St. John was actually born Jill Oppenheim on August 19, 1940 in Los Angeles. On stage and radio from age five, she was pretty much prodded by a typical stage mother. Making her TV debut in a production of “A Christmas Carol,” Jill began blossoming and attracting the right kind of attention in her late teens. She signed with Universal Pictures at age 16 and made her film debut as a perky support in Summer Love(1958) starring then-hot John Saxon. Moving ahead, she filled the bill as a slightly dingy love interest in such innocuous fun as The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1959), Holiday for Lovers (1959), Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963), Who’s Minding the Store?(1963) and Honeymoon Hotel (1964). Whether the extremely photogenic Jill had talent or not was never a fundamental issue with casting agents. In the late 1960s she matured into a classy, ravishing redhead who not only came equipped with a knockout figure but some sly, suggestive one-liners as well that had her male co-stars (and audiences) more than interested. She skillfully traded sexy quips with Anthony Franciosa in the engaging TV pilot to the hit series The Name of the Game (1968) and scored a major coup as the ever-tantalizing Tiffany Case, a ripe and ready Bond girl, in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) opposite Sean Connery’s popular “007” character. She co-starred with Bob Hope in the dismal Eight on the Lam (1967), but she would be included in a number of his NBC specials over the years. She was also a part of Frank Sinatra‘s “in” crowd and co-starred with him in both Come Blow Your Horn (1963) and Tony Rome (1967). On camera her glossy femme fatales had a delightfully brazen, tongue-in-cheek quality to them. Off-camera, Jill lived the life of a jet-setter and was known for her romantic excursions with such eligibles as Sinatra and even Henry Kissinger. Of her four marriages (she never had children), which included millionaire Neil Dublin, the late sports car racer Lance Reventlow, son of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, and popular crooner Jack Jones, she seems to have found her soul mate in present husband actor Robert Wagner, whom she married in 1990 following an eight-year courtship.

Jill worked with Wagner decades before in the soapy film drama Banning (1967) as well as a TV movie. Abandoning acting out of boredom, she has returned on rare occasions. She played against type as a crazed warden in the prison drama The Concrete Jungle (1982) and has had some fun cameos alongside Wagner both on film (The Player (1992)) and even TV (Seinfeld (1989)). In the late 1990s they started touring together in A.R. Gurney’s popular two-person stage reading of “Love Letters.” Jill’s lifelong passion for cooking (her parents were restaurateurs) has turned profitable over the years

. She has written several cookbooks and actually appeared as a TV chef and “in house” cooking expert on morning TV (Good Morning America (1975)). She also served as a food columnist for the USA Weekend newspaper.

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

This IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

The amazine Luise Rainer is still going strong at 100 years old. She recently flew from her home in London to Los Angeles for a TCM celebration of her work on film. Her career in Hollywood was very brief but within that time in the 1930’s, she won two back-to-back Oscars, the only actress to have achieved this distinction. She was born in 1910 in Dusseldorf, Germany. She began her acting career under the tutalege of Max Reinhardt in Vienna and was spotted there by an MGM talent scout and brought to Hollywood in 1936. Her two Oscars were for “The Great Ziegfeld” and “The Good Earth”. However she was very unhappy in Hollywood and by 1940 she had moved to New York. She subsequently moved to London. She made intermittent film and television appearances over the years. Gradually film writers became aware that she was one of the last surviving stars of the Golden Era and she has become much sought after as a witty, interesting interviewee. Luise Rainer died at the age of 104 in December 2014.

This article by Kate Webb in “Culture” in “Aljazeera America”can also be accessed online here.

Her “Guardian” obituary by Ronald Bergan:

There are very few actors whose culture and friendships ranged so widely, and who knew so many of the great names of the 20th century, as Luise Rainer, who has died aged 104. She was married for three tempestuous years to the radical American playwright Clifford Odets; she was a key member of Max Reinhardt’s theatre company; she was the lover of the German expressionist playwright Ernst Toller; Bertolt Brecht wrote The Caucasian Chalk Circle for her. She is frequently mentioned in the diaries of the writer Anaïs Nin, who was fascinated by her; she was an intimate of Erich Maria Remarque and Albert Einstein; Federico Fellinibegged her to be in La Dolce Vita; and George Gershwin gave her a first edition of the score of Porgy and Bess, with a fulsome dedication to her from the composer.

In addition, Rainer was the first movie star to win a best actress Oscar in successive years, the first for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and the second for The Good Earth (1937). And yet, she lived the latter part of her life in comparative obscurity in London, under the name Mrs Knittel.

Rainer was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, of well-to-do parents: Heinz Rainer, a German-American businessman, and his wife Emmy (nee Königsberger), a pianist from an upper-class German-Jewish family. Luise, who had dark, expressive eyes in a mobile, wistful face topped by a mass of shiny black hair, was her father’sAugapfel, the apple of his eye. However, she also experienced what she described as his “tyrannical possessiveness”.

Feeling lost and out of place in an “average bourgeois surrounding”, she sought solace in the arts: “I was always very rebellious. I felt constricted. My rebellion was against the superficial. My wealthy parents were both immensely musical and cultured, but my father wanted me to marry and have children.” At 16, she made up her mind to go on the stage. “I became an actress only because I had quickly to find some vent for the emotion that inside of me went around and around, never stopping. I would have been happy instead of turning to the stage, to write, to paint, to dance, or, like my mother, to play the piano beautifully.”

Behind closed doors, she studied the part of Lulu in Pandora’s Box by Frank Wedekind. After she auditioned at the theatre in Düsseldorf, no one could believe that she had had no previous training. “I could feel the warmth and the love coming to me from the audience and yet I could remain at a protective distance. It was what I needed.”

Her parents refused to see her act, and were horrified when she took the leading role in Wedekind’s then-shocking Spring Awakening. Thereafter she appeared in a number of productions, many with Reinhardt’s company, including Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, for which she was praised personally by the playwright. A newspaper dubbed her “the wunderkind of drama”. At the time, Toller was in love with her. “He was nothing to me but a man. I was in my teens, and his fame didn’t mean anything to me. But I had no room for him in my life because there were so many other men in love with me at the time.”

An MGM talent scout saw Rainer performing in a Viennese production of An American Tragedy in 1934, and she was immediately signed to a seven-year contract as the studio’s secret weapon to keep Greta Garbo in line. So, in 1935, in her late teens, speaking fluent French and German, but little English, Rainer arrived in Hollywood. Her first film for the studio, the spy drama Escapade (1935), in which she replaced Myrna Loy as a Viennese girl opposite William Powell, made her a star.

Her new-found status triggered her first clash with the studio boss Louis B Mayer. He wanted to loan her to 20th Century-Fox to co-star with Ronald Colman in The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. Rainer talked him into giving her a much smaller role in the new Powell picture. “There’s this little scene I think I can do something with,” she told him. This “little scene” – which Mayer ordered out after the first previews but later restored – was the short, poignant telephone scene from The Great Ziegfeld. “I wrote the scene myself,” Rainer stated, “though I stole it from Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine.” As Anna Held, she telephones her ex-husband Florenz Ziegfeld to congratulate him on his marriage. It was enough to sway the voters of the Academy and it also established Rainer as an expert exponent of the laughter-through-tears school of acting.

The following year, Rainer made an exceptional jump to the role of the downtrodden Chinese peasant woman O-Lan in The Good Earth, based on Pearl Buck’s Pulitzer prizewinning novel. She works silently in the fields with her husband, bears his children, begs for food during the famine, and dies quietly years later when the family has achieved some prosperity. When it was shown to the Chinese government, Madame Chiang Kai-shek reportedly could not believe Rainer was not herself Chinese, and Buck later wrote: “I was much moved by the incredibly perfect performance of Luise Rainer … marvelling at the miracle of her understanding.”

But so convinced was Rainer that she had no chance of winning the coveted Oscar for the second year running that on the night of the ceremony she stayed at home in her pyjamas. At 8.35pm, the names of the winners were given to the press, and a member of the Academy telephoned her to tell her she had won. She had to change quickly into evening dress and dash across town with Odets, whom she had married the previous year, to receive her second statuette. That night, she recalled, she and Odets were having a terrific row. She was in tears by the time they got to the Biltmore hotel, and they had to walk around the building five times before she had calmed down sufficiently to go in and accept the award.

Rainer never made big money in Hollywood. She had opportunities to increase her salary, but was disinclined to accept the method of negotiation offered by Mayer. The mogul said to her: “Why don’t you sit on my lap when we’re discussing your contract, the way the other girls do?” The fiery Rainer told him to throw her contract in the bin. “We made you and we’re going to kill your career,” Mayer roared. She replied: “Mr Mayer, I was already a star on the stage before I came here. Besides, God made me, not you!”

Thereafter her films were mediocre, except for The Great Waltz (1938), though her part as Johann Strauss’s wife was considerably trimmed. A nonconformist, Rainer walked around Hollywood in slacks, wearing no make-up, her hair in disarray at the height of 1930s glamour. She also decided to expend her energies elsewhere than on her film career. She helped refugee children from Spain and later, with the US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, assisted European victims of Nazi Germany.

When her disastrous marriage to Odets ended in divorce in 1940, she was living in New York. There she became friendly with Nin, famous for her erotica and her passionate affair with the writer Henry Miller. “My strongest impression when I met her [Rainer] was that you were twins of a sort,” Miller wrote to Nin. “Neither of you belong in this world.” After Nin attended a play in which Rainer was performing, she wrote long descriptions of the actor in her diary. Rainer becomes a “flame” when she performs, says Nin, and certainly “would have been loved by [the French playwright Antonin] Artaud”.

Before she left Hollywood, Rainer was told by Brecht that he would like to write a play for her. She suggested an adaptation of Der Kreidekreis (The Chalk Circle) by AH Klabund, based on a Chinese tale, which became The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Later, she and the playwright fell out, and she never performed in it.

Soon after, in 1945, Rainer retreated into a long and happy marriage with the publisher Robert Knittel. They travelled extensively and lived for many years in Switzerland. She became a mother, painted and did a play from time to time, notably Maxwell Anderson’s Joan of Lorraine, Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, and Chekhov’s The Seagull, in which she played Nina. But for most people, Rainer had disappeared from the public eye.

In the late 50s, Rainer and her family moved to Britain. She appeared in some television plays on the BBC, including Stone Faces (1957), a play written for her by JB Priestley. She also played Regina in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna, where she had performed with Reinhardt many years before. In 1973, she took the taxing part of the narrator in Honegger’s oratorio Judith, in French, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, with Jessye Norman singing the soprano part.

In 1997, she was enticed into returning to the big screen for the first time in over half a century in The Gambler, based on Dostoevsky. Though the film received lukewarm reviews, Rainer was universally praised. According to Variety: “The pic briefly gets a real lift when the legendary Luise Rainer bursts on the scene in a wonderfully showy part as a gambling-addicted granny.”

When I met Rainer at her London flat in 1996, she was an incredibly energetic 86-year-old whom I recognised as the same woman described by Miller as having “wonderful gesture and bearing, such a gracious way of carrying her head, such delicacy”, and the intense and dark eyes that shone from the screen over half a century before.

She is survived by her daughter, Francesca.

• Luise Rainer, actor, born 12 January 1910; died 30 December 2014

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

Gayle Hunnicutt was born in Forth Worth, Texas and was a fashion model before she became an actress. She had her first major role opposite George Peppard in “P.J.” and then 1970 she settled in England after her marriage to actor David Hemmings. She made a number of films with him including “Running Scared”. She starred opposite Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Paul Scofield in “Scorpio” in 1973. Between 1989 and 1991 she returned to the U.S. to play a love interest of Larry Hagman in “Dallas”. Article on Gayle Hunnicut in “MailOnline” here.

Article in “Daily Telegraph”:

By Richard Eden

Gayle Hunnicutt, who told Mandrake in 2008 that she had initiated divorce proceedings against Sir Simon Jenkins, the chairman of the National Trust, after a 30-year marriage, has a reason to smile again. The glamorous actress is enjoying an emotional reunion with the BBC tennis commentator Richard Evans, who was her boyfriend until the year before she married Sir Simon.

Shadowman, poster, (aka NUITS ROUGES), US poster, Gert Frobe (left), Gayle Hunnicutt (right), 1974. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

“I am spending quite a lot of time with this lovely man in Florida,” she told me at the launch of the paperback edition of Miranda Seymour’s bookChaplin’s Girl: The Life and Loves of Virginia Cherrill, at The House of Hardy Amies in Savile Row, London. “It is lovely being with someone who knows you so well and understands you.

“We first met in 1975 and were together for two and a half years. As he is in the tennis world, he travels constantly. I had a career and a child to raise, so I couldn’t always be travelling around the world and we never married.” Hunnicutt, 67, was previously married to David Hemmings, the late star of the cult Sixties film Blow-Up. She added of Evans: “The person who introduced us in 1975 reintroduced us last summer. We both became separated and neither of us knew. It is one of those extraordinary things.”

Gayle Hunnicutt died in 2023

The Telegraph obituary in 2023:

Gayle Hunnicutt, who has died aged 80, was a strikingly glamorous American actress better known for her appearances in gossip columns than for most of her films, having divorced the wayward young British star David Hemmings in 1974 and married the writer and journalist Simon Jenkins.

Cast as elegant sexpots in thrillers like Marlowe (1969) with James Garner, Fragment of Fear (1970), her first British film, in which she co-starred with Hemmings, and Michael Winner’s spy caper Scorpio (1973), Gayle Hunnicutt dazzled with her inordinate good looks.

Gayle Hunnicutt in London, circa 1980 CREDIT: Terry Fincher/Popperfoto via Getty Images

The Telegraph’s critic Richard Last was agog as he ascribed to her “the most luminously beautiful face on television”, while an equally appreciative Clive James, gazing on her ravishing Titian hair and porcelain complexion, was smitten by her “sweet violence to the eye”.

There were others for whom the mere mention of her exotic name suggested a character who had stepped from the pages of an Ian Fleming novel; indeed, in 1972 she was canvassed as a Bond girl opposite Roger Moore in Live and Let Die, but it was not to be.

In the late 1980s millions saw her make a splash on British television as JR Ewing’s old flame, an English countess called Vanessa Beaumont, in the glitzy American soap Dallas.

Gayle Hunnicut with husband David Hemmings arrive at a party in Los Angeles, circa 1968 CREDIT: Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Had she remained in Hollywood rather than marrying David Hemmings and moving to London in 1968, she would probably have had a more illustrious film career, but she considered herself lucky to escape.

In Britain she sought to establish herself as a serious actress, and in the 1970s featured on television in costume dramas including an adaptation of Henry James’s novel The Golden Bowl, Colette’s The Ripening Seed (both 1973) and as Tsarina Alexandra in the classic serial Fall of Eagles (1974).

Offers of film parts continued to flow and she was busy on the stage, too, appearing in productions of Shakespeare and Shaw and in lighter fare such as revivals of Philip Barry’s The Philadelphia Story (Oxford Playhouse, 1981) and Clifford Odets’s The Big Knife (Albery, 1987), in which she co-starred with Martin Shaw.

In 1993, with her second husband, the cerebral Simon Jenkins, once described as “the acceptable face of fogeyism”, she hosted a joint 50th birthday celebration at St James’s Palace, previous venues for their annual extravaganzas having included Battersea Power Station and the Science Museum.

Gayle Hunnicutt with her husband Simon Jenkins, then editor of The Evening Standard CREDIT: Monitor Press Features Limited

Sir Christopher Bland, chairman of London Weekend Television and a future chairman of the BBC, used the occasion to make mischief, spreading a story that Gayle Hunnicutt and Jenkins had spent their wedding night at Henry James’s old home, Lamb House at Rye, reading Middlemarch.

The disintegration of her first marriage put paid to her appearance as Thérèse Raquin in Michael Voysey’s stage adaptation of Emile Zola’s novel of that name at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford in August 1974.

She pulled out a couple of days before the play opened, explaining that she was suffering from laryngitis, but her “indisposition” coincided with her final split from the serially unfaithful Hemmings, who was reportedly being “consoled” by his secretary, Prudence de Casembroot, 26.

The only child of a US Army colonel, Virginia Gayle Hunnicutt was born on February 6 1943 in Fort Worth, Texas. When the family moved to Beverly Hills in the mid-1950s, she won a scholarship to the University of California in Los Angeles, as near to Hollywood as a student of English and drama could get, and dabbled in acting during the summer holidays.

With Hermings in Fragment of Fear CREDIT: Film Stills

Her break came when a Warner Brothers talent scout spotted her in a student production, and after graduating with a BA in English Literature she made her first film, The Wild Angels, with Peter Fonda in 1966, followed by New Face in Hell starring George Peppard. In the same year she was cast on American television in two episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies.

In 1967, at a beach party for Steve McQueen thrown by the Rat Pack member Peter Lawford in Santa Monica, she met David Hemmings, the British actor who had rocketed to international stardom in Michelangelo Antonioni’s quintessential Swinging London film Blow-Up, and followed him to Turkey, where he was shooting The Charge of the Light Brigade. They married in Beverly Hills the following year.

When her marriage to Hemmings broke up in the mid-1970s, she decided to remain in Britain and “its wonderful, wonderful theatres”. She was cast in Twelfth Night at Greenwich, The Tempest at Oxford, A Woman of No Importance at Chichester and JM Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton, also at Greenwich. In 1979 she became the first American actress to play Peter Pan in the West End.

With James Garner in Marlowe, 1968 CREDIT: Alamy

Her tight schedule continued throughout the 1980s, with stand-out projects including the role of the retired opera singer and femme fatale Irene Adler, opposite Jeremy Brett, in the first episode (“A Scandal in Bohemia”) of the ITV series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1984 and the following year taking the female lead in Arthur Penn’s action adventure film Target (1985) opposite Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon.

In one of her last West End roles, aged 52, she donned a stunning backless evening dress in a revival of JB Priestley’s psychological thriller Dangerous Corner (Whitehall, 1995). She once said she did not wish to be remembered as “a lady Texan starlet with a good face”, and as an actress she was always memorable, even if unstretched; the suspicion lingered that her potential was never thoroughly explored.

At their Victorian home in Primrose Hill, north London, she became a notable social asset to her second husband, especially following his appointment as editor of The Times in 1990. “Simon is part of the Establishment,” she declared, “and as his wife, I am too.”

She was the author of the books Health and Beauty in Motherhood (1984), and Dearest Virginia (2004), a collection of her father’s wartime letters written between 1942 and 1944.

With David Hemmings, Gayle Hunnicutt had a son, the actor Nolan Hemmings, named after the character Hemmings played in The Charge of the Light Brigade. After her divorce she married Simon Jenkins in 1978 and had a second son, Edward, who became a journalist. That marriage ended in 2009.

Gayle

Ken Wahl. TCM Overview.

Ken Wahl was a popular American actor in the 1980’s and 90’s. He was born in 1954 in Chicago. He first came to international recognition with “The Wanderers” in 1979. He starred with Paul Newman in “Fort Apache, the Bronx” and then starred himself in the New Zealand thriller “Race for the Yankee Zephyr”. In 1987 he starred in the cult television series “Wiseguy”. The show ran for three years. Ill health as a result of an accident in 1992 has hampered his career. He was an intelligent charismatic actor and it is hoped that he returns to the screen again soon.

TCM Overview:

A tall, dark, down-to-earth leading man, typically in streetwise parts, Ken Wahl had no previous acting training or experience when he auditioned for, and landed, the role of street gang member Richie Gennaro in Philip Kaufman’s “The Wanderers” (1979). His subsequent film work has been sporadic and uneven. Wahl was well-cast as Paul Newman’s partner in Daniel Petrie’s unsatisfying cop drama “Fort Apache, The Bronx” (1981). He was teamed romantically with Bette Midler in the aptly named “Jinxed!” (1982); their off-screen animosity spilled onscreen. While “The Soldier” (1982) offered his first leading role in an action pic, Wahl fared no better, delivering a rather one-note wooden performance. In Sidney J. Furie’s “Purple Hearts” (1984), Wahl was successfully repositioned as a romantic lead, portraying a doctor in Vietnam who falls for a nurse (Cheryl Ladd). His reteaming with Furie, 1991’s “The Taking of Beverly Hills” was meant to cast the actor as an action hero, but the results were pallid. As was his second feature with Daniel Petrie, “The Favor” (filmed in 1990; released in 1994), in which he was object of desire of both Harley Jane Kozak and Elizabeth McGovern.

Wahl gained his highest profile and is perhaps best known as the tough but troubled undercover agent Vinnie Terranova in “Wiseguy” (CBS, 1987-90). During his three year tenure on the series, he brought nuanced shadings to his character who often found himself attracted to the individuals he was investigating. During the first season, the interplay between Wahl and villain Ray Sharkey was multi-layered. Wahl established similar rapport with actors as varied as Kevin Spacey and Joan Severance, Stanley Tucci, William Russ and Patti D’Arbanville. Wahl’s early TV credits include the short-lived crime series “Double Dare” (CBS, 1985) and the TV-movies “Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission” (NBC, 1985) and “Gladiator” (ABC, 1986). In 1990, he left “Wiseguy” in a dispute with the producers, but his career failed to take off as he had hoped. His subsequently returned to the small screen opposite Lisa Hartman Black in “Search for Grace” (CBS, 1994), a drama that more than owed a debt to Kenneth Branagh’s feature “Dead Again”. In 1996, Wahl reprised his role of Vinnie Terranova in “Wiseguy” (ABC), but the results were somewhat disappointing.

Health problems were among the factors that have slowed Wahl’s career. He was critically injured in motorcycle accidents in 1984 and 1992, and in 1993 was rumored to have a brain tumor (which he subsequently denied). Recurrent spinal surgeries have kept him in headlines but away from the cameras for the most part.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Interview with Ken Wahl here.

TCM Overview:

The grand dame of English theater and a prolific screen actress, Gladys Cooper was one of the most revered performers of her generation. She began appearing as a photographic model as a child, and after her stage career began she became a popular pin-up postcard model for British troops during World War I. Her first film appearance was in the silent feature “The Eleventh Commandment” in 1913, but she continued acting on stage, earning notice for work in plays such as Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” in 1938 at the Open Air Theatre. Her first important film role was in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” and she had a supporting role in Alexander Korda’s classic romance “That Hamilton Woman.” One of her most famous roles came in 1942 when she played the mother of Bette Davis’s character in the psychological drama “Now, Voyager”; both she and Davis earned Oscar nominations for their roles. Cooper remained a busy actress throughout the rest of the ’40s and ’50s and earned another Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her work in the historical drama “The Song of Bernadette.” When the golden age of TV began, Cooper found steady work in classic dramatic shows like “Playhouse 90” and “Twilight Zone,” appearing in three episodes of Rod Serling’s sci-fi classic. Nearing the end of her career she had a starring role in the con-men sitcom “The Rogues” with co-star Charles Boyer, and played Mrs. Higgins in the film musical “My Fair Lady” earning plaudits–and awards–for both roles.

Maggie McNamara

Maggie McNamara seemed destined for major stardom in the early 1950’s. However her career soon petered out with just an occassional role therafter. She was born in New York City in 1928. She replaced Barbara Bel Geddes on Bradway in “The Moon Is Blue” in 1951. She played the same part on film with David Niven. Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination. She was one of the leads in the very popular 20th Century Fox movie “Three Coins in the Fountain” and appeared opposite Richard Burton in “Prince of Players”. She did not make another film until 1963 when her old mentor Otto Preminger cast her as Tom Tryon’s sister in “The Cardinal”. She then retired from acting. Maggie McNamara died in 1978. Link to article on Maggie McNamara here.

Article on Maggie McNamara and “The Moon Is Blue”by ‘Fritz and the Oscars”:

An Oscar nomination never will be and never has been a guarantee for a long and successful career as an actor. A lot of actors and actresses disappeared from the public eye after their nomination but there are surely not a lot of Oscar-nominated performers that seem as obscure as Maggie McNamara. Few names in this category provoke such an universal reaction of ‘Who is that?` like hers, except maybe the nominees in the 20s and early 30s. A lot of times, these unknown performers can surprise with a wonderful performance and make me want to know more about them. But to be honest, Maggie McNamara isn’t among them. Her performance in The Moon is Blue came and go and she disappeared from my memory rather quickly and I only checked out her name again on the internet to find some information about her for this review.

There I learned that Maggie McNamara followed her Oscar-nominated debut with a performance in the Best-Picture-nomineeThree Coins in the Fountain but after that, things seemed to fall out of place for her. She only acted in a few more films until she became a typist in New York and then committed suicide in 1978, following a history of mental illness. It’s a tragic end to a performer who might have had a great career but we will never know what went wrong. One thing that must might worked against her was maybe the fact that Maggie McNamara began her career in the same year another actress appeared who was even better suited for the kind of roles Maggie McNamara could have played. Just looking at a picture of her, one can’t help but compare her to Audrey Hepburn – the same delicacy, the same sweet appearance but Maggie McNamara didn’t have the same charming aura and charisma and so she probably must have considered herself lucky to even have been cast in The Moon is Blue. One year later, this part would probably have naturally been offered to Audrey Hepburn.

Well, there is no sense in speculating about the possibilities of a career that never was – so what about this Oscar-nominated debut? I didn’t know what to expect of The Moon is Blue before I watched it, I only heard that it was ‘daring’ and had problems with censors in 1953. So, I didn’t know what would be offered to me but somehow I certainly didn’t expect a plot about a young actress who meets an architect, played by William Holden who must have been a sort of lucky charm for actresses in the 50s when it came to Oscar nominations, on the top of the Empire State Building and then follows him to his apartment where she is courted by both him and the father of his ex-fiancé, played by David Niven. It all sounds rather risky and could have been an amusing comedy of manners, but The Moon is Blue is a movie that seems to think of itself as the height of sophistication and wordplay but unfortunately, it all comes together as an incredibly lifeless, dull and sometimes even unpleasant experience. Like a lot of Neil-Simon-plays, The Moon is Blue has everyone talk in such an invariable mix of jibes, jokes, supposedly clever observations or statements but it unfortunately never develops and constantly circles around the same topic – two men who want nothing more than to bed a girl they just met while she keeps up her proper façade and protects her virginity with the most serious dedication.In the role of the younger suitor, William Holden gives a performance her could do in his sleep while David Niven, who received a Golden Globe, adds some charm and style to the proceedings but the film solely depends on the central performance by Maggie McNamara. And she does succeed in bringing an unique approach to this part but what seems like a breath of fresh air begins to resemble never-ending repetition much too soon. In her first scenes, Maggie McNamara is able to create a certain fascination around her character. She possesses some of the sweetness and naivety that Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron showed that year but at the same time her Patti is obviously more aware of the world – and sex. Maggie McNamara has the thankless job of playing a character who seems perfectly innocent and inexperienced while endlessly talking about sex and ‘virginity’. The trick is that Patti knows everything about sex but decided to wait for the right man. This certainly separates her from the other nominees of 1953 who were either very active in the sexual business or seemed like they never even heard of sex. So, Maggie McNamara’s Patti is a woman who knows what she wants and what she wants to keep but the script so many times bends her character and uses her to proclaim its own sense of failed wit and cleverness that her character basically remains more a scratch than a real woman. Patti says that she doesn’t want to be seduced but at the same time she sees no problem in flirting with two men at the same time, sitting on one’s lap and kissing him.

The movie’s and Maggie McNamara’s problem is that what sounds so modern and open is actually very old-fashioned and done in a way to reach the audience of 1953. Like most other nominees that year, Maggie McNamara has to play an underwritten character but is able to bring a lot more to the movie thanks to her own charm and personality. She plays Patti with an disarming openness and honesty. There seems to be no topic she doesn’t want to talk about but she plays all this with a combination of unique naivety and honest seriousness that very often leaves the other characters speechless, but always in a rather humorous and entertaining kind of way. She’s a woman who is constantly talking about what’s in her mind and who obviously takes everything very seriously but Maggie McNamara plays it all in a manner that is neither playful nor overly earnest – instead, she finds a wonderful combination of both extremes. When William Holden tells her that he can build a cathedral, she earnestly wonders what a cathedral costs these days – a small one. In the hands of Maggie McNamara, Patty sees herself as a very practical and logical woman who may seem rather old-fashioned in her ideas and believes but who is a very lively and lovely spirit. All the time, Maggie McNamara shows that Patti is well aware of what’s in the mind of this man, but she has her own way of handling things. She willingly walks in the cave of the lion but she will surely not allow the lion to eat her (if you forgive this comparison). Maggie McNamara also finds the right tone for her voice which contains an interesting freshness and a bubbly charm that helps her to preventThe Moon is Blue from becoming a complete disaster.

The main problem is that everything that is interesting and fascinating about Maggie McNamara and Patti O’Neill becomes old and uninteresting very soon. Maggie McNamara suffers from a screenplay that is constantly asking her to find new ways to shock or delight the audience but the combination of naivety and seriousness begins to feel very one-dimensional after one gets used to the character and one can’t help but wonder why William Holden and David Niven would continue to be so completely smitten by this strange woman whom they just met a few hours ago. Maggie McNamara plays Patti’s uniqueness in a way that becomes too monotonous too soon and one feels a certain relief when this chatterbox leaves the scenery for a while after having talked almost non-stop for 45 minutes.

Just like the character of Patti O’Neill is neither Princess Ann nor Eloise Kelly, Maggie McNamara possesses neither the sweet charm of Audrey Hepburn nor the sassy personality of Ava Gardener but she finds a balance between them that, as long as it lasts, feels surprisingly intriguing. She doesn’t have the staying power of the other nominees that year which isn’t the fault of Maggie McNamara but of the screenplay that doesn’t offer her one memorable moment or one truly note-worthy line but her performance is still something that is worthwhile in itself.

Maggie McNamara’s biggest success in The Moon is Blue is that she can make Patti a realistic character. Just like Leslie Caron inLili she has to play a woman who seems so unbelievable in everything she does and who, like Ava Gardener in Mogambo, has to say so many lines that could ruin the whole performance – but Maggie McNamara also found an approach to this part that helped to improve the character thanks to the personality and charm of the actress. The thing is that Maggie McNamara had a big disadvantage in her part compared to her other nominees – thatThe Moon is Blue has absolutely no idea what to do with its leading lady. As mentioned, she gets to speak the saucy lines but her character is shockingly underdeveloped – she is actually supposed to be an aspiring actress but there is absolutely no sense in this aspect since it is only mentioned once and neither the script nor Maggie McNamara ever remind the viewer of it again. And during The Moon is Blue, one also rather gets the feelings that she tries to become housewife of the year as she basically spends the whole movie either talking or doing housework in another man’s apartment.

It’s an overall very unsatisfying movie and leading character – Maggie McNamara tries her best but unfortunately both her performance and her part don’t develop and that way loses the interest of the viewer very soon. Still, Maggie McNamara leaves her own distinct mark on this part and even though Audrey Hepburn would seem like an obvious choice for a different actress in this part, it’s doubtful that she could have portrayed the combination of innocence and a much too-mature spirit in the same effective way. It’s a charming and interesting piece of work that unfortunately couldn’t really rise above the material but the lively presence of Maggie McNamara is still the only reason thatThe Moon is Blue doesn’t fail completely. A promising debut to a career that sadly never happened.

The article can also be accessed on line here.

Hugh O’Brien obituary in “The Daily Telegraph”.

Born on April 19, 1923 (some references list 1925), in Rochester, New York, actor Hugh O’Brian had the term “beefcake” written about him during his nascent film years in the early 1950s, but he chose to avoid the obvious typecast as he set up his career. He first attended school at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, then Kemper Military School in Booneville, Missouri. Moving from place to place growing up, he managed to show off his athletic prowess quite early. By the time he graduated from high school, he had lettered in football, basketball, wrestling and track. Originally pursuing law, he dropped out of the University of Cincinnati in 1942 (age 19) and enlisted in the Marine Corps. Upon his discharge he ended up in Los Angeles. He died in September 2016 at the age of 91.

“Daily Telegraph” obituary:

Come Fly With Me, poster, US poster, Pamela Tiffin, Dolores Hart, Lois Nettleton, Hugh O’Brian, Karl Bohm, Karl Malden, 1963. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Hugh O’Brian, who has died aged 91, was one of the first American actors to achieve television celebrity in 1950s Britain as the marshal of Dodge City in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.

More than 200 black-and-white episodes of the series were shown on the fledgling ITV network between 1956 and 1962. Handsome and square-jawed, O’Brian landed the starring title role because he resembled the real Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) as a young lawman in late 19th-century Kansas and later in Tombstone, Arizona.

It was the first television western to be aimed specifically at adults. Series appealing to children such as The Cisco Kid and The Lone Ranger had been scheduled for late afternoon slots. Inspired by the legendary events of the real-life frontier marshal, Earp played in after-dinner prime time and transformed O’Brian into one of television’s first sex symbols.

His distinctive portrayal of what the show’s theme song described as the “brave, courageous and bold” frontier lawman was marked by a black frock coat, a gold brocade waistcoat, string tie and flat-brimmed black hat. Although by modern lights the action is ponderously slow, the series built steadily in the American television ratings, finally ranking as the nation’s fourth most popular programme.

In the course of the series, O’Brian’s Earp encountered such historical figures as John Wesley Hardin, the Thompson Brothers and Doc Holliday, as well as Earp’s brothers Virgil and Morgan. After six seasons, it concluded with an epic five-episode story in which Earp, with the help of his brothers and Doc Holliday, took on Old Man Clanton and the Ten Percent Gang in a final showdown at the OK Corral.

Of Irish, German and French descent, Hugh O’Brian was born Hugh Charles Krampe on April 19 1925 at Rochester, New York. The family moved several times during his childhood to keep pace with his father’s career as a sales executive, but eventually settled in Chicago, where Hugh attended Hirsch High School.

His degree course at the University of Cincinatti was interrupted by the war, and he served in the US Marines, becoming at 18 one of their youngest drill instructors on account of some earlier military training. On demobilisation he had planned to study Law at Yale, but changed his mind after acting with a small theatre group in Los Angeles, stepping in when a friend fell ill. He sold menswear and women’s lingerie, and worked as a dustman, to pay his way through drama school.

Under the stage name Jaffer Gray, he took supporting roles while appearing at a theatre in Santa Barbara, California, but by the time he landed his first film part in 1950 had changed his name to Hugh O’Brian, an accidental mis-spelling of his mother’s maiden name O’Brien. His debut as a polio victim in Never Fear (1950) led to a contract with Universal, for whom he appeared in 18 pictures, including Seminole (1953) and Saskatchewan (1954). When the ABC television network was looking for a star for The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp in 1955, the story consultant Stuart Lake (whose controversial 1931 biography of Earp had inspired the series) recommended O’Brian because of his resemblance to the real-life character.

During the series, O’Brian became adept with Earp’s trademark “Buntline Special” pistols with extended barrels and shoulder stock, which allowed him to fire accurately over long distances. Some experts now think these weapons were a fabrication by the journalist Ned Buntline rather than authenticated historical fact. O’Brian played the last character that his old friend John Wayne ever killed on the screen in Wayne’s final film The Shootist (1976), considering it a great honour, before recreating his Wyatt Earp role for television in Guns of Paradise (1990), The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) and the independent film Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone (1994).

Away from the cameras, he dedicated much of his time to Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), a non-profit youth leadership development programme that enrols 10,000 second-year high school students every year. O’Brian had been inspired in this endeavour in 1958 when he spent nine days visiting the missionary Dr Albert Schweitzer in Africa. Since its inception, more than 355,000 young people in 20 countries have taken part.

He married for the first time in 2006, when he was 81. He and his wife, the former Virginia Barber, his long-standing girlfriend, were serenaded by their close friend, the actress Debbie Reynolds.

Hugh joined a little theater group and a Santa Barbara stock company where he developed his acting chops and slowly built up his résumé. He was discovered for TV by director/actress Ida Lupino which opened the door to his signing with Universal Studios for films. Hugh’s gentlemanly ruggedness, similar to a James Garner or a Gene Barry, was ideal for pictures, and his lean physique and exceptionally photographic mug had the modest, brown-eyed, curly-haired looker plastered all over the movie magazines. He rebelled against the image for the most part and, as a result, his years with Universal were not as fruitful as they could have been. For the duration, he was pretty much confined as a secondary player to standard action pictures such as Red Ball Express(1952), Son of Ali Baba (1952) and Seminole (1953). It was Rock Hudson who earned all of the Universal glamour guy roles and the out-and-out stardom that could easily have been Hugh’s.

In 1954, he left Universal to freelance but did not fare any better until offered the starring role in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955) on TV, a year later. It became a mainstay hit and Hugh an “overnight” star. During his six-year run on the western classic, he managed to show off his singing talents on variety shows and appeared on Broadway. The handsome bachelor remained a durable talent throughout the 60s and 70s with plentiful work on the summer stock stage and on TV, including the series Search(1972), but never got the one role to earn the critical attention he merited.

A sports enthusiast, his hobbies have included sailing, tennis, swimming and long-distance bicycling and his many philanthropic efforts have not gone unrecognized. His proudest achievement is the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), which he founded in 1958 after spending considerable time with Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his clinic in Africa. Struck by the impassioned work being done by Schweitzer, O’Brian set up his own program to help develop young people into future leaders. O’Brian has since been awarded honorary degrees by several prestigious institutions of higher learning. The perennial bachelor finally “settled down” and tied the knot at age 81 with long-time companion Virginia Barber who is close to three decades his junior. They live in his Benedict Canyon home. He is at this time working on an autobiography

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

TCM Overview:

A handsome action star of TV and the occasional feature film, Hugh O’Brian is best recalled for playing the title role in “The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp” (ABC, 1955-61), which was more a serialized drama than a standard Western. He later reprised the role in the 1991 NBC miniseries “Luck of the Draw: The Gambler Returns” and in “Wyatt Earp Returns to Tombstone” (CBS, 1994).

Educated at a military school, O’Brian was reportedly the youngest drill instructor in the history of the Marine Corps when he assumed those duties at age 18. After attending the University of Cincinnati and UCLA, O’Brian broke into films in 1950 in the song-and-dance feature “No Fear” and as a Western desperado in “The Return of Jesse James.” Usually cast in supporting roles, he continued in action films, like “Battle at Apache Pass” (1952) and “The Man From the Alamo” (1953). Voted the most promising male newcomer of 1953 by the Hollywood Foreign Press, O’Brian moved to more substantial roles like the lyricist who wins Mitzi Gaynor’s heart in “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1954) and the antagonist of Native Americans in “White Feather” (1955). He turned to comedy, playing off his good looks (not unlike Rock Hudson), in “Come Fly With Me” (1963) as the object of a flight attendant’s glances on a transatlantic flight. O’Brian was a cowboy hired to create a ranch in Africa in “Africa – Texas Style!” (1967), and, more recently, had a supporting role in “Doing Time on Planet Earth” (1988).

The actor became a bona fide star, however, on the small screen. He began appearing in anthology series in the 50s like “Fireside Theatre” and “The Loretta Young Theatre” before landing his signature role as Earp. O’Brian later appeared on panel shows and in guest shots, returning to the series grind as a secret agent with a transmitter in his ear for constant contact with command central in “Search” (NBC, 1972-73). He continued to make the occasional guest appearance into the 90s on shows such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “L.A. Law.” The actor has also made several TV-movies, ranging from “Wild Women” (ABC, 1970) to the pilot for “Fantasy Island” (ABC, 1977). More recently, he played a member of the establishment in need of Marshall Dillon in “Gunsmoke: The Last Apache” (CBS, 1990).

After he found TV stardom, O’Brian also discovered the theater. He made his Broadway debut in the musical “Destry Rides Again” (1959) and appeared again on Broadway in “First Love” (1963). Equally at home in light comedy or musicals, he headed national tours of “Cactus Flower” (1967-68), “1776” (1972) and “Guys and Dolls” (1979).

Jordan Christopher (October 23, 1940 – January 21, 1996) was an American actor and singer. He was the lead singer of The Wild Ones, who recorded the original version of the rock classic “Wild Thing” after Christopher had left the band.

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, to Macedonian immigrants Eli and Dorothy Zankoff, he moved at an early age to Akron, where his father ran a downtown bar.

Christopher became interested in singing with the rise of rock & roll, spending much of his time at the music clubs in Akron’s black section. He formed a doo-wop group called the Fascinations, who released unsuccessful singles on several small labels in the early 1960s.

Christopher’s break came when he joined The Wild Ones, the house band at New York’s Peppermint Lounge, as singer and guitarist. After a residency at the Peppermint Lounge of eight months, The Wild Ones were hired to play at Arthur, the Manhattan discothèque operated by Sybil Williams, then recently divorced from Richard Burton. Within a month of meeting, Christopher and Williams – eleven years his senior – began dating and married in 1966. They had a daughter named Amy, and he had a daughter named Jodi from a previous marriage.

Thanks to the publicity Williams received as the ex-wife of Richard Burton, there was great interest in Arthur, and The Wild Ones were able to secure a recording contract with United Artists records, releasing an album, The Arthur Sound. However, Christopher left the band shortly after its release to develop an acting career. Producer Gerry Granahan later commissioned Brill Building songwriter Chip Taylor to write a song specifically for the band. “Wild Thing” – sung by the band’s new lead vocalist, Chuck Alden, not Christopher – was the result.^[1]

Christopher acted in several films including The Fat Spy (1966), Return of the Seven (1966), The Tree (1969), Pigeons (1971), Star 80 (1983), Brainstorm (1983) and That’s Life!(1986). However his most celebrated role was as a dissolute rock star in the cult film Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969), in which he played the male lead opposite Jennifer Jones. He also appeared on Broadway in Sleuth.

Christopher continued to act intermittently, and he worked behind the scenes with his wife in her operation of the New Theatre on 54th Street in New York City and Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, New York .

Christopher died of a heart attack on January 21, 1996.

Edward Winter was a versatile American actor best remembered for his role as Colonel Flagg in TV’s long running “Mash”. He was born in 1937 in Ventura, California. He began his career on Broadway and starred in Cabaret” in 1967 and then later in “Promises, Promises”. His film’s include “Porky’s Two” and “From the Hip”. He died in 2001.

Obituary in “The New York Times”:

dward Winter, a character actor who worked in theater, films and television, died on March 8 in Los Angeles. He was 63 and had Parkinson’s disease.

Mr. Winter began his acting career in 1962 with the San Francisco Actors Workshop and then moved to New York, where he appeared in productions of ”Galileo,” ”Danton’s Death,” ”The Country Wife,” ”The Condemned of Altona” and ”The Caucasian Chalk Circle.”

He made his Broadway debut in the 1966 musical ”Cabaret” as Ernst, and was nominated for a Tony Award as best supporting actor.

Mr. Winter appeared on television as Colonel Flagg in the series ”M*A*S*H.” His film credits included ”A Change of Seasons,” ”The Buddy System” and ”Porky’s II.”

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Jill St John

Jill St. John. IMDB

Luise Rainer

Gayle Hunnicutt

The Telegraph obituary in 2023:

Ken Wahl

Ken Wahl. TCM Overview.

Gladys Cooper

Maggie McNamara

Maggie McNamara

Hugh O’Brian

Hugh O’Brien obituary in “The Daily Telegraph”.

Jordan Christopher

Edward Winter

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