Nobu MCarthy was born Nobu Atsumi in Canada in 1934 of Japanese parents. She was raised in Japan and in 1955 married U.S. serviceman David McCarthy and moved with him to the U.S.A. She made her film debut in 1958 in “The Geisha Boy” with Jerry Lewis. She had the female lead in “Walk Like a Dragon” and “Five Gates to Hell”. She appeared in many of the major television series of the 60’s and 70’s. She became a member of the East West Players a Los Angeles based theatre group. Nobu McCarthy died in Brazil in 2002 while on location for a film.
Her obituary in “Backs
Nobu McCarthy, a Hollywood starlet who later became artistic director of the pioneering theater company East West Players, has died. She was 67. McCarthy died Saturday after being stricken on the set of a movie that she was working on in Londrina, Brazil. She had just returned to work after recovering from pneumonia and was stricken with what doctors diagnosed as an aneurysm in her aorta, said Tamlyn Tomita, an actress also in the cast.The movie “Gaijin II,” about several generations of Japanese immigrants in Brazil, suspended production following McCarthy’s death.
McCarthy was born as Nobu Atsumi in Ottawa, Canada, where her father was a private secretary to the Japanese ambassador. She was brought to Japan as a baby and later trained in ballet and sang with choral groups on stage and radio. She became a successful model and was named Miss Tokyo in the competition leading up to the Miss Universe pageant. She married U.S. Army Sgt. David McCarthy in 1955 despite the objections of her parents. An agent spotted her in Little Tokyo and she was sent to an audition at Paramount Pictures that landed her a role in the Jerry Lewis comedy “The Geisha Boy” in 1958. During her busiest period in Hollywood in the late 1950s and early 1960s, McCarthy appeared in “The Hunters,” “Wake Me When It’s Over” and “Walk Like a Dragon.”
Original Cinema Belgian Poster – Movie Film Posters
McCarthy withdrew from acting in the late 1960s, but after a divorce in 1970 she revived her career via East West Players by joining the company in 1971 and playing a number of roles on its small stage. East West Players, the country’s first Asian American theater company, was founded in 1965 by Mako and others. “We all liked her,” said Mako, the group’s founding artistic director. “She became a very steady actress, although she had arthritis that sometimes made her move in a way that looked older than she was.”
East West Players went through a turbulent period in 1989 and Mako resigned under pressure from the board. McCarthy was selected as his replacement and served as artistic director until 1993. “She brought her calming influence to the group, broadened the outreach, and brought a sense of balance and stability,” said George Takei, best known for his role as Sulu in “Star Trek.” Later credits for McCarthy included the landmark TV movie “Farewell to Manzanar” in 1976 and the films “Karate Kid II” in 1986 and “Pacific Heights” in 1990. McCarthy and her second husband, the late William Cuthbert, received a lifetime achievement award from East West in 1996. McCarthy is survived by two children from her first marriage and three brothers.
Peter Finch said once: ‘I’ve been lucky. My agent might have hoped that I’d be a bigger name – as they call it – in America but I’m very happy. I like what I do and I choose what I do’. He did not always choose wisely. He was marked for the heights of stardom when he made his forst film in Britain but for a while the real peaks eluded him – too many bad films and kiss of death, a long-term Rank contract.
In the right material he always looked good. He had a good actor’s voice and stance, a touch of arrogance, a touch of humour, some warmth, leading man’s looks and the same sort of gritty dependability that characterized the malestars of Hollywood’s golden age” – David Shipman’s “The Great Movie Stars- The International years”. (1972)
He won for his performance in “Network” in 1976. Peter Finch was born in London in 1916. He went to live in Australia when he was ten years of age. He made his first film in Australia in 1938, The film was entitled “Dad and Dave Come to Town”.
When Laurence Oliver and Vivien Leigh were touring that country with the Old Vic in 1948 they met Peter Finch and he was offered a role by Oliver in the play “Daphne Laureola” in London which he accepted.He made the film “The Miniver Story” in England and then went to Hollywood to make “Elephant Walk” with Elizabeth Taylor and Dana Andrews. Over the next few years he made many fine films including “A Town Like Alice”, “The Nun’s Story”, “The Girl With Green Eyes”, “No Love for Johnny” and “Far From the Madding Crowd”. He was enjoying the huge revival of his career when he died from a heart attack in 1977 at the age of sixty. Peter Finch was the first actor to win a Academy Award for Best Actor after his death
TCM Overview:
The Trials Of Oscar Wilde, poster, US poster art, Peter Finch, 1960. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Josephine And Men, poster, top from left: Glynis Johns and Peter Finch, Donald Sinden, Jack Buchanan, poster, 1955. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
A former vaudeville performer and popular radio actor in Australia, Peter Finch transitioned to film in his native England, where he rose from supporting actor to leading man in a number of emotionally charged dramas. While he delivered more than a few notable performances in his four-decade career, Finch was forever identified as the raving mad prophet Howard Beale in “Network” (1976), whose line “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” remained one of the most identifiable in all of cinema history. After supporting roles in several British-made films, he made the Hollywood transition with “The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men” (1952) and starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “Elephant” (1954).
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Finch went back and forth between films made in Hollywood and England, earning award nominations along the way for his performances in “The Nun’s Story” (1959), “The Trials of Oscar Wilde” (1960) and “No Love for Johnnie” (1961). Some time passed before Finch delivered another noteworthy performance, this time earning acclaim for his sympathetic and non-clichéd turn as a gay man in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971).
A few years later, he captured attention as the raving maniac Beale in “Network,” only to die from a heart attack two months before winning his one and only Academy Award, making him the first actor to win a posthumous Oscar.
Born on Sept. 28, 1916 in London, England, Finch was raised by his father, George, a research chemist from Australia who moved to England prior to World War I, and his mother, Alicia. His parents divorced when he was just two years old, leading to his father being given custody.
Decades later, Finch discovered that George was not his biological father and that his mother had carried on with an army officer named Wentworth Edward Dallas Campbell, leading to his parents’ divorce. After living for a time with his paternal grandmother in France, the 10-year-old was sent to live with his great uncle in Sydney, Australia.
After graduating from North Sydney Intermediate High School, Finch worked as a waiter, an apprentice on a sheep farm, and a copy boy for the Sydney Sun, but soon felt the pull of stage acting. He began appearing in sideshows and vaudeville, even serving as a stooge for American comedian Bert le Blanc before touring Australia with George Sorlie’s traveling company.
It was with Sorlie’s troupe that gained Finch notice with a producer from the Australian Broadcasting Commission, who served as his mentor and cast him in a children’s radio series. At the time, he also made his feature debut in “Dad and Dave Come to Town” (1938), which led to a more substantial part in the crime drama “Mr. Chedworth Steps Out” (1939). But with the world on the brink of war, Finch’s acting career was put on hold in order for him to enlist in the Australian army in 1941.
He served for a time in the Middle East and participated in the Bombing of Darwin as an anti-aircraft gunner, though he did continue to perform by appearing in the wartime propaganda film “The Rats of Tobruk” (1944), and directing plays for tours of army bases and hospitals. Following his discharge with the rank of sergeant in 1945, Finch established himself as one of Australia’s premiere radio actors and went on to co-found the Mercury Theatre Company with fellow actors Allan Ashbolt, Sydney John Kay, Colin Scrimgeour and John Wiltshire.
Named after Orson Welles’ own company, the Mercury put on a number of notable plays, including “The Imaginary Invalid” (1948), which starred Finch and attracted the attention of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, who later invited the actor to London. He returned to films with supporting roles in British productions like “Train of Events” (1949), “Eureka Stockade” (1949) and “The Wooden Horse” (1950), before making the turn toward Hollywood films.
He played the Sheriff of Nottingham in “The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men” (1952) and starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor – who took over for an ailing Vivian Leigh – in the rather disappointing melodrama “Elephant Walk” (1954). His career took off as he approached middle age in the mid-1950s with films including the charming romantic comedy “Simon and Laura” (1955), “The Dark Avenger” (1955) co-starring Errol Flynn, and the somber war drama “A Town Like Alice” (1956). In “Robbery Under Arms” (1957), he played famed cattle thief Captain Starlight, while he earned critical acclaim and a BAFTA nomination for his turn as a crusty surgeon working with an attractive nun (Audrey Hepburn) in the Belgian Congo in “The Nun’s Story” (1959).
Finch was somewhat less busy during the 1960s, but early in the decade he delivered to acclaimed, award-winning performances, playing the title roles in the biopic “The Trials of Oscar Wilde” (1960) and the Parliament-set drama “No Love for Johnnie” (1961). Both roles earned him BAFTA Awards for Best Actor. He next starred opposite Jane Fonda and Angela Lansbury in the drama about marriage and infidelity, “In the Cool of the Day” (1963), before playing the third husband of a restless Anne Bancroft in the domestic drama “The Pumpkin Eater” (1964).
After starring in another relationship drama, “Girl With Green Eyes” (1964), Finch had a supporting role as a captain in the action yarn “The Flight of the Phoenix” (1965), starring James Stewart, and settled into a series of smaller films like “Judith” (1966), “Far from the Maddening Crowd” (1966), “The Legend of Lylah Clare” (1968) and “The Red Tent” (1969). He went on to deliver a powerful performance as a homosexual doctor engaged in a love triangle with Murray Head and Glenda Jackson in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971), a revolutionary drama for its frank and rather sympathetic perspective on homosexuality. His performance as the well-adjusted doctor seeking escape from his repressed upbringing earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
After his Oscar-worthy performance in “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” Finch starred in a string of mediocre films like “Shattered” (1972), a psychological drama about the disintegration of a man’s life due to alcohol and a bad marriage, and “Lost Horizon” (1973), a disastrous remake of Frank Capra’s 1937 original of the same name. After playing real-life Cardinal Azzolino in “The Abdication” (1974), Finch played the one character that he would forever be indentified with, TV news anchor Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves whose mental breakdown on live television leads to a ratings bonanza for a struggling upstart station in Sydney Lumet’s searing satire, “Network” (1976). Also starring William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall, the film was a major critical and commercial hit, and received 10 Academy Award nominations. But just two months before the Oscar ceremony, on Jan. 15, 1977, Finch suffered a fatal heart in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he was waiting to meet Lumet for breakfast. He was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead hours later. Finch was 60 years old. At the ceremony, he won the Oscar for Best Actor, which was accepted by “Network” writer Paddy Chayefsky and Finch’s third wife, Eletha Barrett. Soon after, he was posthumously nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance as Yitzhak Rabin in the television movie, “Raid on Entebbe” (NBC, 1977), which aired days before he died and was the last time Finch was seen on screen.
By Shawn DwyerThe above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Blog on Peter Finch in “Pop Matters” can be accessed here.
Richard Egan was born in 1929 in San Francisco. Among his first film credits was as Joan Crawford’s husband in “The Damned Don’t Cry” in 1950. He starred opposite Elvis Presley in “Love Me Tender” where he won Debra Paget away from Presley. I thought that this was a bit unbelievable when Elvis was such a major star.
Richard Egan played the dad of Sandra Dee, uhappily married to Constance Ford in “A Summer Place” in 1959. The film is remembered now for it’s hit theme tune and for the breakthrough role of Troy Donahue. He was in “Pollyanna” but this was the breakthrough role of Hayley Mills. He appeared in the television series “Empire” which was the breakthrough role for Ryan O’Neal. He died at the age of 63 in 1987.
TCM overview:
Richard Egan (July 29, 1921 – July 20, 1987) was an American actor. In some films he is credited as Richard Eagan. Born in San Francisco, California, Egan served in the United States Army as a judo instructor during World War II. A graduate of the University of San Francisco (B.A.) and Stanford University (M.A.).
In 1956, he starred in Presley’s first film, Love Me Tender, and in 1959 was the male lead opposite Dorothy McGuire in A Summer Place.
In 1960, Egan appeared in such films as Pollyanna, Esther and the King. Other noteworthy films include Undercover Girl, Split Second, A View from Pompey’s Head,”Voice In The Mirror”, about the man who started AA, and The 300 Spartans.
During the decade of the 60s, Richard Egan worked extensively in television, starring in the western drama series, Empire from 1962 to 1964. After his series ended, he made guest appearances on other television shows as well as acting in several motion pictures for the big screen plus in films made specifically for television.
In 1982 he joined the cast for the new daytime television political drama Capitol.
Richard Egan died in Los Angeles, California, on July 20th, 1987, 9 days before his 66th birthday, and was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in suburban Culver City, California.
Richard Egan was respected within the acting community for having helped a number of young actors get their first break in the film industry.
To view article on Richard Egan, please click here.
Patricia Medina obituary in “The Guardian” in 2012.
Although the actor Patricia Medina, who has died aged 92, had a cut-glass English accent, her voluptuous Latin looks often prevented her from playing English characters. As her name suggests, she was half-Spanish, born in Liverpool, the daughter of a Spanish father – a lawyer and former opera singer – and an English mother.
Medina, who appeared in more than 50 feature films, many of them costume dramas, was seldom called upon to display much acting ability, though she was an unusually spirited damsel in distress. However, she used the one chance she had to work with a director of magnitude, Orson Welles, in Mr Arkadin (also known as Confidential Report, 1955), to show what she was capable of. As Mily, in this breathless, globetrotting film, she is an earthy nightclub dancer who attempts to seduce the amnesiac billionaire Welles. It was through Welles that Medina met her second husband, Joseph Cotten, to whom she was married for 34 years until his death in 1994.
In her late teens, Medina was tested at Elstree studios. “I was awful,” she recalled. “The fact is I couldn’t act. I can’t believe they liked me. But one producer said it was because I was beautiful.” She made 10 films in Britain from 1937 to 1945, including The First of the Few (1942), They Met in the Dark (1943), with James Mason, and a haunted house comedy, Don’t Take It to Heart (1944), opposite her first husband, Richard Greene. It was around this period that she was given the title “the most beautiful face in the whole of England”.
In 1945 Medina moved to Los Angeles with Greene, who had already made a career there. Her first Hollywood picture was the psychological melodrama The Secret Heart (1946), though she was barely noticed down the cast list headed by Claudette Colbert, Walter Pidgeon and June Allyson. She went on to play sultry loose women in two period pieces: The Foxes of Harrow (1947) and The Fighting O’Flynn (1949), the latter with her husband.Advertisement
After playing stooge to a talking mule in Francis (1950) and to Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950), Medina embarked on her swashbuckler’s lady period, starting with four films co-starring Louis Hayward: Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950), its sequel, Captain Pirate (1952), The Lady and the Bandit (1951) and Lady in the Iron Mask (1952).
There were also the Arabian Nights fantasies such as The Magic Carpet (1951), Aladdin and His Lamp (1952), and Siren of Bagdad (1953), with Medina’s beautiful dark eyes flashing behind veils. She was the feminine interest in Botany Bay (1953), starring Alan Ladd and James Mason, and Sangaree (1953), conveniently dying as Arlene Dahl’s rival for Fernando Lamas, and as the beautiful obsession of Karl Malden’s biologist/misogynist in Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954). On television, she appeared in episodes of Zorro and in horse operas such as Rawhide and Have Gun Will Travel, usually as a Mexican.
Botany Bay, lobbycard, from left, James Mason, Patricia Medina, 1953. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Despite continuing to appear in hokum such as Drums of Tahiti (1954), Pirates of Tripoli (1955), Duel on the Mississippi (1955) and The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956), Medina, by now divorced from Greene, was having “one hell of a time”, as she put it.
In 1960 she married Cotten. They were an odd couple – she, a vivacious extrovert; he, a quiet, gentlemanly Virginian. They were inseparable, although they rarely appeared together on screen. But in 1962 Medina made her Broadway debut opposite Cotten in Calculated Risk, a whodunit that ran for six months.
One of her few films over the last decades was Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George (1968), in which she played a dominatrix.
When Cotten’s health deteriorated, Medina devoted herself to him, working only spasmodically. In 1998 she published her memoirs, Laid Back in Hollywood.
• Patricia Medina, actor, born 19 July 1919; died 28 April 2012
“The Guardian” obituary by Ronald Bergan can be accessed online here.
Carolyn Jones is chiefly known for her role as Mortica in the cult television series “The Adams Family”. However she is much much more than that. She gave several highly effective performances in the 1950’s and 1960’s and it is a pity that Mortica has obscured her other roles. She was born in Amarillo, Taxas in 1930. Jones spent several years in tiny parts in films and on television. In 1957 she was featured in “Batchelor Party” as a beatnik who was lonely and looking for security. She was heartbreaking in the role and was nominated for an Academy Award. Over the next five years she made several good movies, “Hole in the Head”, “King Creole” “Last Train from Gun Hill” and “Ice Palace”. Then came “The Adams Family”. When the series finished, she seemed to concentrate on television At the time of her death in 1983 she was starring in the long-running soap “Capitol”.
In addition to her movie work, Miss Jones appeared in about 30 different television programs, including six episodes in the ”Dragnet” series. She also had roles in ”Playhouse 90” productions and the ”Colgate Comedy Hour.” But it was her performances in the early 1960’s television series, ”The Addams Family,” that brought her greater popularity than any of her movie portrayals.
She is survived by her husband and a sister, Betty, of Massachusetts.
Article on Carolyn Jones on the “Cult Sirens” website here. .
THE TURNING POINT, US poster art, Edmond O’Brien, Alexis Smith, William Holden, Carolyn Jones, 1952.CAREER, US poster art, clockwise from top left: Dean Martin, Anthony Franciosa, Carolyn Jones, Shirley MacLaine; bottom inset: Joan Blackman, 1959
New York Times obituary in 1983:
The movie and television actress Carolyn Jones, who was best known for her role as the ghoulish Morticia in the television series ”The Addams Family,” died of cancer today at her home here. She was 50 years old.
Among the films in which Miss Jones appeared were, ”Marjorie Morningstar,” ”The Road to Bali,” ”Baby Face Nelson” ”The Saracen Blade,” ”The Man Who Knew Too Much,” ”The Seven Year Itch,” ”House of Wax,” ”The Tender Trap,” ”Last Train From Gun Hill” and ”Ice Palace.”
In addition to her movie work, Miss Jones appeared in about 30 different television programs, including six episodes in the ”Dragnet” series. She also had roles in ”Playhouse 90” productions and the ”Colgate Comedy Hour.” But it was her performances in the early 1960’s television series, ”The Addams Family,” that brought her greater popularity than any of her movie portrayals. Early Interest in Acting
Miss Jones was born in Amarillo, Tex., and showed an early interest in acting. When she was 15 years old, she enrolled in classes at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, even though she was three years under the acceptable age.
Her first motion-picture role came as a result of a Playhouse production when she was seen by a talent scout and signed to appear with William Holden in ”The Turning Point” in 1952.
Miss Jones’s first marriage, to the producer Aaron Spelling, ended in 1964. She later married Herbert Green, a conductor-arranger, and lived in semiretirement for two years in Palm Springs – which she called ”God’s waiting room.” After her second marriage ended in divorce, Miss Jones married an actor, Peter Bailey-Britton, in 1981.
She is survived by her husband and a sister, Betty, of Massachusetts
Movita Wolf Call, US lobbycard, Movita, (third left), John Carroll, (right), 1939. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Movita obituary in “The Telegraph” in 2017.
Movita who has died in Los Angeles aged 98, was briefly the second wife of Marlon Brando, although his paramour for much longer; she also herself had a minor career in Hollywood, most notably featuring in the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty, which Brando remade nearly three decades later.
The details of her relationship with Brando were complex and shrouded in mystery. Much of this was deliberate on his part. Not only did he dislike press intrusion into his personal life, he also enjoyed the licence that his status gave him to conduct it with little regard for others .
He and Movita Castaneda, who was of Mexican descent, first met in about 1951 while sharing a taxi when he was researching the life of the revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. Castaneda was then in her mid-thirties, eight years older than Brando, and divorced from Jack Doyle, the former boxer.
Brando, the rising star, found her amusing and sympathetic. He had a penchant for fiery Latin women, and made use of Castaneda in part to lend an authentic inflection to his screen portrayal of Zapata in 1952. They also became lovers, albeit from the start she knew that she was merely one of an exhaustive – indeed, exhausting – rota of lovers of both sexes; among them was Marilyn Monroe.
Movita Castaneda had already enjoyed tempestuous affairs with Clark Gable and Errol Flynn, but with Brando she was content to remain in the shadows. This suited Brando, who kept her quartered nearby as he made Julius Caesar (1953) and On the Waterfront (1954). At times he introduced her as his girlfriend, but there were several break-ups even before he married the British actress Anna Kashfi in 1957.
Brando and Anna Kashfi divorced within two years, and began a long and bitter dispute for custody of their son, Christian. In court, it then emerged that Brando had secretly married Movita Castaneda in Mexico in 1960, perhaps because she was then pregnant . Their son, christened Sergio but always known as Miko, later became one of Michael Jackson’s principal confidants.
Despite being legally her husband, Brando still declined to live with Castaneda, and in the early Sixties publicly continued with a bachelor existence. Much of that time he spent in Tahiti, shooting Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Soon after its release, he announced that he was to marry his 19-year-old co-star, Tarita Teri’ipaia.
Tired of his philandering, Movita Castaneda decamped to Mexico. In 1966 she would give birth to their daughter, Rebecca, even though their marriage had by then been dissolved. (Brando is thought to have sired at least 15 children, not all of them acknowledged; one theory has it that he may be the grandfather of the singer Courtney Love).
Although sources give several dates of birth for her, Movita Castaneda was born (according to her family) on April 12 1916, on a moving train which had just crossed the border from Mexico into Arizona. She was christened Maria Luisa and was one of 10 children; her sister Petra is still alive aged 102.
She was educated at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, and her ability to play guitar led to her being spotted by film scouts. She made her screen debut in 1933, singing the Oscar-nominated Carioca in Flying Down to Rio. The tune was noteworthy for providing the music for the first time that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were seen dancing together on screen.
Movita’s looks led to her being cast in exotic roles in several other films of the period, including Mutiny on the Bounty, in which she played Franchot Tone’s island love interest – although it was his co-star Gable who caught her eye. For publicity purposes, MGM executives renamed her “Movita”, which she thereafter retained.
Her other films in this period include Captain Calamity (1936), with George Houston and Marian Nixon; El Capitan Tormenta (1936), with Lupita Tovar; Paradise Isle (1937), which had the tag-line “His strong arms drew this red-lipped-beauty to him!”; and The Hurricane (1937), directed by John Ford.
In 1939 she married Jack Doyle . The 6ft 5in Irishman, known as “The Gorgeous Gael”, was noted for his fondness for women and drink. In 1933 he lost the fight for the British heavyweight title after being disqualified for punching low, allegedly while hung-over and suffering from venereal disease. He had more success against Clark Gable, whom he is said to have knocked out following a row over Carole Lombard.
Doyle had by then made a second career as a singer, but his eye for the ladies had led the Dodge automobile family to send a gunman after him when he proposed to marry its heiress, Delphine. His first wife, the actress Judith Allen, had previously got shot of him by sending him a telegram marked merely “Finished”.
After their wedding in Dublin, he and Movita Castaneda became a well-known attraction in British music halls. They recorded a hit song, South of the Border, and opened a nightclub in London, the Swizzle Stick. Movita Castaneda saw out the Blitz there, and in 1941 appeared in the British thriller Tower of Terror.
Her real fear, however, was reserved for Doyle when he was in drink. They divorced in 1944 after he had beaten her up, causing her to miscarry, when she caught him dallying with a woman in a taxi outside their home. (Doyle died penniless in 1978).
After returning to Hollywood, she began to rebuild her career with bit parts in films, such as playing Henry Fonda’s cook in Fort Apache (1948).
She and Brando remained on amicable terms until his death in 2004, although he kept her short of money, forcing her to work for a time as a delivery driver for a garage. Later she had a small role for some years in the Dallas spin-off, Knots Landing.
Moyna MacGill was born in Belfast in 1995. She was the daughter of a solicitor. She acted on the London stage and in British films. In 1940 she was a widow and to protect her children from the London bombings she moved with them to New York. She then went to Hollywood where she worked as a sterling character actress in such films as “Green Dolphin Street”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and on many television programmes. She died in 1975. Moyna MacGill was the mother of Angela Lansbury. Blog on Moyna McGill can be accessed here.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Born in Belfast, she was the daughter of a wealthy solicitor who was also a director of the Grand Opera House in Belfast, a position that sparked her interest in theatrics. She was still a teen when she was noticed riding the London Underground by director George Pearson, who cast her in several of his films. In 1918, she made her stage debut in the play Love in a Cottage at the West End‘s Globe Theatre.
Encouraged by Gerald du Maurier to change her name to Moyna Macgill (which invariably was misspelled as “MacGill” or “McGill”, and on at least one occasion, the film Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven, as “Magill”), she became a leading actress of the day, appearing in light comedies, melodramas, and classics opposite Herbert Marshall, John Gielgud, and Basil Rathbone, among others.
Twenty-six-year-old Macgill was married with a three-year-old daughter, Isolde (who later married Sir Peter Ustinov), when she became involved romantically with Edgar Lansbury, a socialist politician, who was a son of the Labour MP and Leader of the Opposition George Lansbury. Her husband, actor Reginald Denham, named Lansbury as co-respondent when he filed for divorce. A year after it was finalized, Macgill and Lansbury married and with Isolde settled into a garden flat in London‘s Regent’s Park.
Macgill temporarily set aside her career following the birth of daughter Angela and twin sons Edgar, Jr., and Bruce (both went on to becomeBroadway producers, but Bruce is better known for his work on television, such as the series The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, and his sister’s Murder, She Wrote), although music and dance were prevalent in their upbringing. When they moved into a larger house in suburban Mill Hill, she turned their home into a salon for actors, writers, directors, musicians, and artists, all of whom left an impression on young Angela and were instrumental in directing her interests towards acting.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Brian Keith obituary in “The Independent” in 1997.
Brian Keith was a burly veteran of over 100 films, in which he appeared with such stars as Doris Day, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston, Roger Moore, Elizabeth Taylor and Gene Tierney.
Keith’s parents were both actors. His father, Robert Keith, starred in such films as The Wild One (1953), Young at Heart (1954), Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and Guys and Dolls (1955), but Brian, despite having appeared in a silent film at the age of three, initially had no acting ambitions.
During the Second World War he served with the US Marine Corps as a machine gunner. After his release from the service, he finally succumbed to family tradition; his first adult screen role was with Charlton Heston in Arrowhead (1953). For the rest of the 1950s he darted from studio to studio, appearing in such action films as Alaska Seas (1954), The Violent Men (1955), Run of the Arrow (1957) and Fort Dobbs (1958).
In the television series The Westerner (1960) Keith played Dave Blassingame, a stony-faced adventurer roaming the Mexican border accompanied by a mongrel called Brown. That same dog had played the title role in the Disney film Old Yeller three years earlier.
Coincidentally, the Disney organisation offered Keith his next film; in The Parent Trap (1961), he and Maureen O’Hara were the divorced parents of twins, both played by Hayley Mills. The plot concerned the siblings’ efforts (successful, of course) to reunite their parents. After The Parent Trap Keith suddenly found himself playing more sympathetic roles; in Disney’s Those Calloways (1965) he played a likeable eccentric who, with the help of his adoring family, battles to save a lake on which he intends to make a bird sanctuary.
Television producers too saw him in a different light, and he was starred in the sitcom Family Affair (1966-71), in which he played a carefree, wealthy bachelor whose life is suddenly complicated when three lovable young orphans are thrust upon him. His next sitcom, The Little People (later The Brian Keith Show), was filmed in Hawaii. The story of a father and daughter team of paediatricians running a clinic on a tropical island, it ran from 1972 until 1974. Thereafter, Keith regarded Hawaii as his adopted state and visited there as often as possible.
He made a personal success as President Teddy Roosevelt in the film The Wind and the Lion (1975) and appeared with Roger Moore in the James Bond film Moonraker (1979). He acted with Burt Reynolds in Hooper (1978), directed by Hal Needham. In 1981 he appeared in Sharkey’s Machine, directed by Reynolds himself. Keith played an army officer, involved in an adulterous affair with Elizabeth Taylor, in John Huston’s disastrous film Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). Two years later, Keith appeared in another cinematic flop, Krakatoa, East of Java; the quality of which can best be summed up by the fact that Krakatoa is actually west of Java.
After the failure of the Peter Ustinov comedy Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981), Keith joked, “I only did the picture because it had a long title, and I seem to specialise in those” (he had previously appeared in The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, 1966, With Six You Get Egg Roll, 1968, and Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came, 1970).
Brian Keith’s most recent film appearances were in Young Guns (1988) and Welcome Home (1989).
Robert Brian Keith, actor: born Bayonne, New Jersey 14 November 1921; married first Frances Helm, second Judith London, third Victoria Young; died Los Angeles, California 24 June 1997.
Brian Keith was a burly veteran of over 100 films, in which he appeared with such stars as Doris Day, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston, Roger Moore, Elizabeth Taylor and Gene Tierney.
Keith’s parents were both actors. His father, Robert Keith, starred in such films as The Wild One (1953), Young at Heart (1954), Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and Guys and Dolls (1955), but Brian, despite having appeared in a silent film at the age of three, initially had no acting ambitions.
During the Second World War he served with the US Marine Corps as a machine gunner. After his release from the service, he finally succumbed to family tradition; his first adult screen role was with Charlton Heston in Arrowhead (1953). For the rest of the 1950s he darted from studio to studio, appearing in such action films as Alaska Seas (1954), The Violent Men (1955), Run of the Arrow (1957) and Fort Dobbs (1958).
In the television series The Westerner (1960) Keith played Dave Blassingame, a stony-faced adventurer roaming the Mexican border accompanied by a mongrel called Brown. That same dog had played the title role in the Disney film Old Yeller three years earlier.
Coincidentally, the Disney organisation offered Keith his next film; in The Parent Trap (1961), he and Maureen O’Hara were the divorced parents of twins, both played by Hayley Mills. The plot concerned the siblings’ efforts (successful, of course) to reunite their parents. After The Parent Trap Keith suddenly found himself playing more sympathetic roles; in Disney’s Those Calloways (1965) he played a likeable eccentric who, with the help of his adoring family, battles to save a lake on which he intends to make a bird sanctuary.
Television producers too saw him in a different light, and he was starred in the sitcom Family Affair (1966-71), in which he played a carefree, wealthy bachelor whose life is suddenly complicated when three lovable young orphans are thrust upon him. His next sitcom, The Little People (later The Brian Keith Show), was filmed in Hawaii. The story of a father and daughter team of paediatricians running a clinic on a tropical island, it ran from 1972 until 1974. Thereafter, Keith regarded Hawaii as his adopted state and visited there as often as possible.
He made a personal success as President Teddy Roosevelt in the film The Wind and the Lion (1975) and appeared with Roger Moore in the James Bond film Moonraker (1979). He acted with Burt Reynolds in Hooper (1978), directed by Hal Needham. In 1981 he appeared in Sharkey’s Machine, directed by Reynolds himself. Keith played an army officer, involved in an adulterous affair with Elizabeth Taylor, in John Huston’s disastrous film Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). Two years later, Keith appeared in another cinematic flop, Krakatoa, East of Java; the quality of which can best be summed up by the fact that Krakatoa is actually west of Java.
After the failure of the Peter Ustinov comedy Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981), Keith joked, “I only did the picture because it had a long title, and I seem to specialise in those” (he had previously appeared in The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, 1966, With Six You Get Egg Roll, 1968, and Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came, 1970).
Brian Keith’s most recent film appearances were in Young Guns (1988) and Welcome Home (1989).
Robert Brian Keith, actor: born Bayonne, New Jersey 14 November 1921; married first Frances Helm, second Judith London, third Victoria Young; died Los Angeles, California 24 June 1997.
Christopher Jones obituary in “The Daily Telegraph” in 2014.
Christopher Jones was born in Jackson, Tennessee in 1941. He was very similar in looks to the late James Dean and was promoted as such on film and television. In 1965 he starred in “The Legend of Jesse James” on television. He starred in the cult classic “Wild in the Streets” in 1968. In Europe he made “The Looking Glass War”. In 1969 he came to the West of Ireland to make David Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” with Sarah Miles and Robert Mitchum. For whatever reason, this proved to be his last fim for years. He disappeared from public view. Quentin Tarentino tried to persuade him to return to film acting by offering him a role in “Pulp Fiction”. However he refused the offer. He did though make a comeback in 1996 in “Mad Dog Time”. This film seems to be his last film. He died in January 2014. His obituary in “The LA Times” can be accessed here.
“Telegraph” obituary:
Christopher Jones, the actor, who has died aged 72, was tipped in the late 1960s to be James Dean’s successor as the idol of the Odeons. However, on the cusp of international fame, and with a life riven by tragedy, he turned his back on Hollywood shortly after completing his most famous role, the romantic lead in David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter.
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He faced two major traumas. First, he struggled to cope with his mother’s mental breakdown and early death in a Tennessee asylum. Then, as big roles finally materialised and the industry lay at his feet, he was irrevocably disturbed by the murder of Sharon Tate (Roman Polanski’s wife) with whom he was having an affair. Shaken by the events and his mauling by the critics on the release of Lean’s epic, he retired from acting in 1970.
Billy Frank Jones (known professionally as Christopher) was born on August 18 1941 in Jackson, Tennessee, into straitened circumstances. His family lived above the grocery store where his father was a clerk. When Jones was four, his mother was confined to a psychiatric hospital, where she remained until her death in 1960. “I can remember her picking me up once,” recalled Jones, “but I can’t remember what she looked like.” He was passed between relatives and a boys’ home and frequently separated from his brother. In his early twenties he joined the Army but went Awol two days after signing up (for which he was briefly jailed).
His acting trajectory was a blueprint for 1960s matinee stars. He lit up Broadway in The Night of the Iguana (1961) and auditioned at the celebrated Actors Studio in New York – he even married Susan Strasberg, the daughter of its director, Lee Strasberg. Television roles included the cult classic Wild in the Streets (1968) and the titular outlaw in The Legend of Jesse James (1965-66). Hollywood beckoned. He took on swinging farce in Three in the Attic (1968), and The Looking Glass War (1969) saw him in a John le Carré thriller.
This rise led to his role in Ryan’s Daughter. Jones played Major Randolph Doryan, the English commander of an Army base on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, who has an affair with Rosy (Sarah Miles), the wife of a local schoolmaster. The casting was unlikely. The shoot dragged on for a year and relations between Lean and Jones became strained. A lack of chemistry between Jones and Miles provoked the crew to drug him in order to “help matters” in the love scenes. The lack of authenticity didn’t end there – Jones’s dialogue was dubbed in post-production.
Celebrity, however, brought with it the attentions of some of the world’s most beautiful actresses, including Pia Degermark and Olivia Hussey. “My manhood is my soul,” he once claimed. Bette Davis disagreed. “I tried to jiggle her,” admitted Jones, “but I wasn’t sophisticated enough.” One of his lovers was the English starlet Susan George who, he recalled “came up to my apartment when I was staying in London and the next day moved her toothbrush in, so I had to say: ‘No way’”.
However, it was his short-lived affair with Sharon Tate that was to affect him most deeply. The pair’s dalliance took place in 1969 in Rome, where Jones was filming and Sharon Tate was visiting. She was pregnant with Polanski’s baby at the time and Jones was involved with Pia Degermark.
On the evening of August 9 1969, while Jones was filming in Ireland, members of Charles Manson’s cult broke into Sharon Tate’s home in Los Angeles and stabbed her to death. “I loved Sharon and she loved me,” stated Jones (who only talked of the events in 2007 “partly because I want to see if God strikes me dead”). When the news reached him at his hotel in Ireland he experienced a breakdown and, as Sarah Miles described in her memoir, his behaviour became increasing erratic.
After Ryan’s Daughter he gave up acting – “I realised I hated it” – and lived off the proceeds of his film career, taking up painting and sculpture. “He was big, and with the right person directing, he could still be as big as anybody,” noted Quentin Tarantino in the 1990s. However, in 1994 Jones turned down the director’s offer to play the part of Zed the “Gimp” in Pulp Fiction (1994). His then girlfriend called the role “disgusting”. A late return to acting in the 1996 crime caper Trigger Happy failed to fan the embers of a once blazing career.
Jones’s marriage was dissolved. He is survived by his partner, Paula McKenna, and seven children.
The above “Telegraph” ob ituary can also be accessed online here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Christopher Jones was a brief cult star of the late 60s counterculture era and a would-be successor to James Dean had he wanted it. Born Billy Frank Jones amid rather impoverished surroundings to a grocery clerk in Jackson, Tennessee in 1941, his artist mother had to be institutionalized when Chris was 4. She died in a mental facility in 1960 and this was always to haunt him. Shifted back and forth between homes and orphanages and placed in Boys Town at one point to straighten out his life, Chris joined the service as a young adult but went AWOL two days later. After serving out his time on Governor’s Island for this infraction, he moved to New York and studied painting, meeting a motley crew of actors and artists. Friends were startled by his uncanny resemblance to James Dean – his brooding good looks and troubled nature were absolutely eerie. Encouraged to try out for the Actor’s Studio, he was accepted and eventually won a role on Broadway in “The Night of the Iguana” in 1961. He ended up marrying acting coach Lee Strasberg’s daughter, Susan, in 1965 but his erratic behavior sent her packing within three years. Chris’ undeniable charisma led him to Hollywood for a role in Chubasco (1967) with wife Susan, and then brief cult stardom in Wild in the Streets (1968) as a rock star who becomes president. This popular satire, in turn, led to international projects such as The Looking Glass War (1969) and Ryan’s Daughter (1970). But the trappings of success got to him. Numerous entanglements with the Hollywood “in crowd” took its toll, including those with Pamela Courson (Jim Morrison’s girlfriend at the time), the ill-fated Sharon Tate, one-time co-star Pia Degermark and Olivia Hussey (who rushed into a marriage with Dean Paul Martin shortly after Chris turned his back on marriage). The work load left him emotionally spent and Tate’s brutal murder left him devastated. He split the scene but ended up a victim of Sunset Strip drug culture. Little was heard of Chris until decades later when Quentin Tarantino offered him a part in Pulp Fiction (1994). The now reclusive and eccentric Jones refused the role, but this was not the case with a lower profile role in Mad Dog Time (1996) a couple of years later. This proved to be only a minor comeback or not has yet to be determined.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
