Michael Rennie’s best known role was as the visitor from space Klaatu in the science-fiction classic “The Day the Earth Stood Stlll” in 1951. Pervious to that most of his career was in British film. His most frequent co-star was Jean Simmons. During the 1950’s he was under contract with 20th Century Fox and starred in many of their epic dramas. As his film career waned he moved into acting on television. He died in 1971.
“Wikipedia” entry Michael Rennie (25 August 1909—10 June 1971) was an English film, television and stage actor best known for his starring role as the benevolent space visitor Klaatu in the 1951 classic science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still. Eric Alexander Rennie was born in Idle, a village near the West Yorkshire city of Bradford (subsequently, a Bradford suburb) and educated at The Leys School, Cambridge. During the late 1930s, Rennie served his apprenticeship as an actor, gaining experience in acting technique, while touring the provinces in British repertory. There is evidence that, at the age of 28, he was noticed by one of the British film studios, which decided to appraise his potential as a film personality by arranging a screen test. The 1937 test, which exists in the British Film Institute archives under the title “Marguerite Allan and Michael Rennie Screen Test”, did not lead to a movie career for either performer. In Secret Agent, he was primarily a stand-in for leading man Robert Young, and his own on-camera bit was so small that it cannot be discerned in the preserved final version of the film. He also played other bit parts and later, minor, unbilled roles in ten additional films produced between 1936 and 1940, the last of which, “Pimpernel” Smith, had a belated release in July 1941, while Rennie was already in uniform, serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Second leads and then leads in seven other British films produced between 1946 and 1949 followed, including what may be considered Michael Rennie’s only role as one of two central characters in a full-fledged love story. In the 47-minute episode, “Sanatorium”, the longest among the Somerset Maugham tales constituting the film Trio (released in London on 1 August 1950), the mature-looking, lightly-mustached, 40-year-old Rennie and twenty-years-younger Jean Simmons are patients in the title institution, which caters to victims of tuberculosis. Michael Rennie, along with Jean Simmons and The Wicked Lady leading man James Mason, was one of a number of British actors offered Hollywood contracts in 1949-50 by 20th Century Fox’s studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. The first film under his new contract was the British-filmed medieval period adventure The Black Rose, starring Tyrone Power who became one of Rennie’s closest friends. Fifth-billed after the remaining first-tier stars Orson Welles, Cecile Aubry and Jack Hawkins, Rennie was specifically cast as 13th century King Edward I of England, whose 6′ 2″ frame gave origin to his historical nickname, “Longshanks”. Rennie’s second Fox film gave him fourth billing in the top tier. The 13th Letter, directed by his future nemesis and love rival Otto Preminger. Rennie’s next film dramatically moved his billing up to first and assured him screen immortality. The Day the Earth Stood Still was the first postwar respectably-budgeted “A” science fiction film. A serious, high-minded exploration of humanity’s place in the universe and our responsibility to maintain peaceful coexistence, it has remained the gold standard for the genre of the era. A unique aspect of the film is the participation, within its fictional structure, of four top newscasters and commentators of the period—Elmer Davis, H. V. Kaltenborn, Drew Pearson and Gabriel Heatter. The story was dramatized in 1954 for Lux Radio Theatre, with Rennie and Billy Gray recreating their roles and Jean Peters speaking the dialogue of the Patricia Neal character. Seven years later, in October 1961, when The Day the Earth Stood Still had its television premiere on NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies, Michael Rennie appeared before the start of the film to give a two-minute introduction. Convinced that it had a potential leading man under contract, the studio decided to produce a version of Les Miserables as a vehicle for him. The film, released on August 14, 1952, was well-directed by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Lewis Milestone, and Rennie’s performance was respectfully, but not enthusiastically, received by the critics. Michael Rennie’s next film was the last under his five-year contract with 20th Century Fox. The Rains of Ranchipur, released on December 14, 1955. In 1959 Rennie became a familiar face on television, taking the role of Harry Lime in The Third Man, a British-American syndicated TV series very loosely based on the character created by Orson Welles. During the 1960s he continued his TV career with guest appearances on such series as Route 66 (a moving portrayal of a doomed pilot in the two-part episode, “Fly Away Home”); Alfred Hitchcock Presents; Perry Mason (one of four actors in four consecutive episodes substituting for series star Raymond Burr, who was recovering from surgery); Wagon Train, The Great Adventure; Lost in Space (another two-part episode—as an all-powerful alien, “The Keeper”, he worked one last time with his Third Man co-star Jonathan Harris); The Time Tunnel (as Captain Smith of The Titanic, in the series’ September 9, 1966 premiere episode); Batman (as the villainous Sandman in league with Julie Newmar’s Catwoman), three episodes of The Invaders (as a malign variation of the Klaatu persona), and two episodes of The F.B.I.. Both of Michael Rennie’s marriages ended in divorce. He was first married to Joan England in 1938. His second marriage was to actress Maggie McGrath. Their son David Rennie is a UK circuit judge in Lewes, Sussex. Michael Rennie was also briefly engaged to the ex-wife of the Hollywood director, Otto Preminger. It was rumoured that Preminger, who not surprisingly hated Rennie, was the prime instigator in Rennie’s fall from stardom. John Rennie, the designer and builder of the original Waterloo Bridge, is presumed to have been his great-great grandfather. His final seven feature films were lensed in Britain, Italy, Spain and, in the case of The Surabaya Conspiracy, The Philippines. Less than three years after leaving Hollywood, he journeyed to his mother’s home in Harrogate, at a time of family grief following the death of his brother. It was there that he suddenly died of an emphysema-induced heart attack, nine weeks before his 62nd birthday. Upon cremation, his ashes laid to rest in Harlow Cemetery, Harrogate.
Detailed biography on “Wikipedia” can be found here.
Les Miserables, poster, US poster art, Michael Rennie, (beard), 1952. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Noted actor Richard Jordan worked tirelessly on stage, screen and television, and although he died too young he left behind many memorable roles, playing both good and bad characters.
Born in New York on July 17th 1937, the privately educated Jordan graduated from Harvard in 1958, and within 3 years was acting on Broadway. Richard performed in various Shakespeare plays and before long he was directing his own stage productions, both on and off Broadway.
Jordan’s movie career began when he was 34, initially in gritty westerns, with his first two starring opposite Burt Lancaster (‘Lawman’ and ‘Valdez is Coming’ – both 1971). The following year Jordan appeared in the Charles Bronson Indian tale ‘Chato’s Land’, from ‘Lawman’ director Michael Winner, whom Richard despised.
Jordan’s breakthrough came in 1973 when he co-starred in Peter Yates’ excellent ultra-realistic drama ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’. The movie starred Robert Mitchum (in a career-best performance), as a small time criminal turned informer, with Richard giving a natural turn as corrupt detective, Dave Foley. The following year Richard teamed again with Mitchum for Sydney Pollack’s Japan-set gangster thriller ‘The Yakuza’.
After featuring in the 1976 Sci-Fi fave ‘Logan’s Run’, Richard collected a Golden Globe for his excellent portrayal of Irish immigrant Joseph Armagh, in the much lauded NBC mini-series ‘Captains and the Kings’.
1978 began with a co-starring role in Woody Allen’s drama debut ‘Interiors’. That same year saw Richard in a striking performance as Jean Valjean in a terrific TV Version of the oft-filmed classic ‘Les Misérables’, alongside Anthony Perkins as the evil guard, Javert. Staying in the UK Richard followed up ‘Les Misérables’ with the entertaining caper ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square’, with David Niven and Elke Sommer.
The Eighties proved disappointing for the talented Jordan. The decade started out badly with the big budget flop ‘Raise the Titanic’ (’80), which sank at the box office. He was very good though opposite Anthony Hopkins in the 1981 television film ‘The Bunker’, playing Third Reich minister Albert Speer to Hopkins’s Adolph Hitler. Parts in David Lynch’s 1984 big budget ‘Dune’, and ‘The Secret of My Success’ (’87), as Michael J Fox’s corporate uncle, did little for him professionally, and he continued to act and direct on stage.
After a prominent role in the Sean Connery cold war thriller ‘The Hunt for Red October’ in 1990, Jordan gave a terrific performance in what would be his final movie, 1993’s ‘Gettysburg’. His portrayal of Confederate officer Lewis Armistead was certainly award-worthy. His speech at the end of the film is portrayed with such depth and honesty, creating enough feeling of a character being able to lead the men into an eventual final charge. A truly fitting end to a fine career.
Married twice (to actresses Kathleen Widdoes and later Blair Brown), Richard died far too young, from a brain tumour at just 56, on August 30th 1993. A staunch advocate of the theatre, he remained dedicated to his craft to the very end, giving impressive turns in many productions. Much missed, Richard Jordan left behind a daughter by his first wife, and a son by his long-term companion, actress Marcia Cross.
Favourite Movie: The Friends of Eddie Coyle
An article on IMDB by Jon C. Hopwood:
Harvard-educated stage and screen actor Richard Jordan was born into a socially prominent family on July 19, 1937 in New York City, the grandson of Learned Hand, the greatest American jurist never to have served on the U.S. Supreme Court. Newbold Morris, his stepfather, was a member of the New York City Council during Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia‘s administration. Young Richard was educated in private Manhattan schools and then at the exclusive Hotchkiss prep school in Lakeville, Connecticut. While at Hotchkiss, he was outstanding as the eponymous lead of the school play “Mr. Roberts”, which won him a place in the Sharon, Connecticut summer stock company. Jordan went to England as an exchange student at the Sherbourne School, a college (private school) that was over 1,000 years old. After graduating from Sherbourne, Jordan entered Harvard College and took his degree in three years.
At Harvard, Jordan was a member of the Dramatic Club, both as an actor and as a director. It was while at Harvard that he decided to become a professional actor and began performing with off-campus stage companies. After graduating from Harvard, Jordan launched what was to be a prolific stage career in New York, making his Broadway debut in December 1961 in the play “Take Her, She’s Mine” under the direction of the venerable George Abbott in Biltmore Theatre. The play, which starred Art Carney,Elizabeth Ashley in a Tony Award-winning turn, and Heywood Hale Broun, was a hit, playing 404 performances.
Jordan next appeared in a one-night flop, in “Bicycle Ride to Nevada”, which opened and closed on September 24, 1963. He was more lucky with his next play, “Generation”, a comedy starring Henry Fonda that played for 300 performances in the 1965-66 season. He last appeared on Broadway in a success d’estime, John Osborne‘s “A Patriot for Me”, directed by Peter Glenville and starring Maximilian Schell and Tommy Lee Jones, who was making his Broadway debut. By that time, Jordan had established himself as a leading player Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway, which accounted for the majority of his over 100 New York stage appearances.
Jordan, as actor and director, was a major force in the development of New York’s “Off-Off-Broadway” theater that flourished in the 1960s. He was one of the founders of the Gotham Arts Theater, which put on plays in an old funeral parlor on West 43rd Street. Fittingly, the company’s first play was about necrophilia. Jordan engaged young New York artists to design the sets, the results of which were not always auspicious. Jordan said of this development, “With our weirdo plays against their far-out sets…it was total insanity!” He made a significant breakthrough, career-wise, with his appearance in the anti-war play “The Trial Of The Catonsville Nine” in both New York and California.
Jordan spent eight years with Joseph Papp‘s New York Shakespeare Festival. He made his debut with Papp’s Shakespeare Festival in 1963, playing “Romeo” opposite the “Juliet” ofKathleen Widdoes, the fellow Papp stock company member who would become his wife, in Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park series. The couple married in 1964, and their eight-year marriage produced a daughter, Nina Jordan, born in 1966, who would later co-star with her father in the movie Old Boyfriends (1979).
Although he appeared on television during the 1960s, the tall, handsome and talented Jordan did not make his motion picture debut until 1971, when he appeared in a supporting role in Michael Winner‘s horse opera Lawman (1971), which featured a first-rate cast, including Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Lee J. Cobb and Robert Duvall. However, it was his role as the baby-faced, amoral Treasury agent in The Friends of Eddie Coyle(1973) that made him a known commodity on-screen, while it was the monumental mini-series Captains and the Kings (1976) that made his reputation. His performance as the Irish immigrant “Joseph Armagh” brought him an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe award, and it also brought him his long-time companion, co-star Blair Brown, whom he lived with for many years and by whom he had a son.
An actor rather than a star, Jordan played many unsympathetic roles, including that of Nazi Albert Speer in the TV movie The Bunker (1981). He continued to appear on the stage, Off-Broadway and in stock companies touring the major cities of the U.S., while appearing in films and on TV. Jordan was the manager of the L.A. Actors Theater in Los Angeles during the 1970s, where he produced, directed and wrote his own plays. For the 1983-84 Off-Broadway season, he won an Obie Award for his performance in Czech playwright Václav Havel‘s “A Private View”. He won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for directing Havel’s “Largo Desolato” at the Taper, Too in 1987.
In 1992, Jordan had begun filming The Fugitive (1993) when his fatal illness forced him to leave the production. Thus, Jordan’s final role was that of “General Lewis Armistead” in the film Gettysburg (1993), which was a labor of love for him. He was close friends with Michael Shaara, the author of the novel “The Killer Angels”, which the movie was based upon, and contributed to the screenplay. Jordan’s last appearance as an actor was the death of his on-screen character, “General Armistead”.
Richard Jordan died in Los Angeles, California of a brain tumor on August 30, 1993. He was 56 years old.
TCM OvervieThis strong-featured regular of Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival appeared in over 100 Broadway and off-Broadway plays. Jordan began making screen appearances in lead roles, such as Woody Allen’s “Interiors” (1978) and as one of the “Iron Johns” in “The Men’s Club” (1986). He appeared in the weirdly Mid-Pacific “The Yakuza” (1975) and in supporting roles in features that ranged from big budget comedies like “The Secret of My Success” (1987) to the rococo “Dune” (1985), where he played an oddly normal character. Jordan was in several TV-movies and miniseries in the 1970s and gave a gripping performance as Albert Speer in the TV-movie movie “The Bunker” (1981). He played his last TV role in the movie “Are You Lonesome Tonight” (1992). Very shortly before he died, Jordan completed work on the earnest feature epic, “Gettysburg” (1993), which showcased his sizable, stalwart talent as Brigadier General Armistead, who died doing battle with Union forces.
Article on Richard Jordan in “Tina Aumont’s Eyes” website:
Noted actor Richard Jordan worked tirelessly on stage, screen and television, and although he died too young he left behind many memorable roles, playing both good and bad characters.
Born in New York on July 17th 1937, the privately educated Jordan graduated from Harvard in 1958, and within 3 years was acting on Broadway. Richard performed in various Shakespeare plays and before long he was directing his own stage productions, both on and off Broadway.
Jordan’s movie career began when he was 34, initially in gritty westerns, with his first two starring opposite Burt Lancaster (‘Lawman’ and ‘Valdez is Coming’ – both 1971). The following year Jordan appeared in the Charles Bronson Indian tale ‘Chato’s Land’, from ‘Lawman’ director Michael Winner, whom Richard despised.
Jordan’s breakthrough came in 1973 when he co-starred in Peter Yates’ excellent ultra-realistic drama ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’. The movie starred Robert Mitchum (in a career-best performance), as a small time criminal turned informer, with Richard giving a natural turn as corrupt detective, Dave Foley. The following year Richard teamed again with Mitchum for Sydney Pollack’s Japan-set gangster thriller ‘The Yakuza’.
After featuring in the 1976 Sci-Fi fave ‘Logan’s Run’, Richard collected a Golden Globe for his excellent portrayal of Irish immigrant Joseph Armagh, in the much lauded NBC mini-series ‘Captains and the Kings’.
1978 began with a co-starring role in Woody Allen’s drama debut ‘Interiors’. That same year saw Richard in a striking performance as Jean Valjean in a terrific TV Version of the oft-filmed classic ‘Les Misérables’, alongside Anthony Perkins as the evil guard, Javert. Staying in the UK Richard followed up ‘Les Misérables’ with the entertaining caper ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square’, with David Niven and Elke Sommer.
The Eighties proved disappointing for the talented Jordan. The decade started out badly with the big budget flop ‘Raise the Titanic’ (’80), which sank at the box office. He was very good though opposite Anthony Hopkins in the 1981 television film ‘The Bunker’, playing Third Reich minister Albert Speer to Hopkins’s Adolph Hitler. Parts in David Lynch’s 1984 big budget ‘Dune’, and ‘The Secret of My Success’ (’87), as Michael J Fox’s corporate uncle, did little for him professionally, and he continued to act and direct on stage.
After a prominent role in the Sean Connery cold war thriller ‘The Hunt for Red October’ in 1990, Jordan gave a terrific performance in what would be his final movie, 1993’s ‘Gettysburg’. His portrayal of Confederate officer Lewis Armistead was certainly award-worthy. His speech at the end of the film is portrayed with such depth and honesty, creating enough feeling of a character being able to lead the men into an eventual final charge. A truly fitting end to a fine career.
Married twice (to actresses Kathleen Widdoes and later Blair Brown), Richard died far too young, from a brain tumour at just 56, on August 30th 1993. A staunch advocate of the theatre, he remained dedicated to his craft to the very end, giving impressive turns in many productions. Much missed, Richard Jordan left behind a daughter by his first wife, and a son by his long-term companion, actress Marcia Cross.
Favourite Movie: The Friends of Eddie Coyle Favourite Performance: Les Miserables
The above article can also be accessed online here.
Joan Collins has had a remarkably long and successful career on film. In 1951 she made her first film “Lady Godiva Rides Again”. By 1955 she was in Hollywood making “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing”. She made several films for 20th Century Fox studios over the next few years. In 1981 her career reached enormous exposure through her success as Alexis Carrington in the night-time soap “Dynasty”. She has maintained her career profile through further film and television roles as well as a career in writing and journalism. She was made a Dame by the Queen in 2015. Her official website can be found here.
TCM Overview:
A glamorous presence on film and television for a half-century, Joan Collins specialized in seductive, larger-than-life women with a lust for just about everything in projects ranging from “Land of the Pharoahs” (1955) and “Island in the Sun” to “The Stud” (1978) and most famously, “Dynasty” (ABC, 1981-89). Her physical beauty – which was often likened to a British Elizabeth Taylor – was a drawback in her earlier career, which found her playing wayward girls and wantons. After a short stint in Hollywood, during which she dated numerous studs of the time, including Warren Beatty, she drifted into B-grade pictures for over a decade before being cast as the venomous Alexis Carrington in “Dynasty.” Her overripe performance launched a thousand similar “rich bitch” characters on primetime, but Collins managed to hold the title with charm and sexiness for decades after the show’s demise. An outspoken and at times brazen figure in real life, with a string of marriages and public romances to her name, she remained one of the most cheekily appealing actresses in the world.
Born Joan Henrietta Collins in Paddington, a metropolitan borough of Westminster, London on May 23, 1933, she was one of three children born to Elsee Bessant, a dance teacher, and South African-born agent Joseph William Collins, who would later count The Beatles and Tom Jones among his clients. Her younger sister, Jackie, followed in her footsteps with appearances in B- pictures and television in the 1960s before establishing herself as a best-selling author of salacious romance novels. In some ways, Joan Collins led a charmed adolescence – she and her siblings were raised in the affluent neighborhood of Maida Vale, and Collins made her acting debut at the age of nine, playing a boy in a production of “A Doll’s House.” But these early years were also difficult ones for her. Joseph Collins was reportedly a strict father with a taste for discipline, which he wielded over children and spouse alike. Collins found an escape in the movies; she had fallen in love with them after seeing “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) at an early age, and envisioned a life for herself that was spent as an actress.
She approached her father about auditioning for London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, to which he agreed on one condition: that she would become his secretary if she did not pass. Thankfully, Collins did make the grade, and by 17, she had landed a contract with the Rank Film Company, one of the U.K.’s biggest studios. Though not exactly praiseworthy of his daughter’s accomplishments – Collins would be remarkably dismissive of his children in public throughout his life – he also served as her first agent. Her tenure with Rank was particularly unspectacular; a debut as a beauty contestant in “Lady Godiva Rides Again” (1951) was followed by a string of forgettable roles in dramas, comedies and costume pictures, including “I Believe in You” (1952) and “Decameron Nights” (1953) with Louis Jordan. Collins supplemented her film income as a popular model in magazines. At age 18, she was voted the most beautiful girl in England by a photography group. She also was not afraid to speak about her issues with Rank; in 1954, she complained to a London newspaper about the company’s lack of support for its female talent. The statement would help to cement Collins’ image as an outspoken woman for the rest of her career.
In 1955, 20th Century Fox signed her to a contract, hoping to mold her into their version of Elizabeth Taylor, to whom she bore a strong resemblance, minus violent Taylor eyes. Her first American feature was a bit of a camp effort; “Land of the Pharoahs” (1955), directed by Howard Hawks and penned in part by William Faulkner, was epic in scope but sudsy in its story of a self-absorbed pharaoh and the princess (Collins) who wants to enjoy some of his riches in the present, rather than the afterlife. The film cemented Collins’ screen image as a sexually rapacious, morally ambiguous femme fatale – a role she would play on and off for the remainder of her career. Collins’ private life also helped to sell that notion to ticket buyers. Her first marriage, to Irish actor Maxwell Reed, ended because he had allegedly tried to sell her to an Arab sheik in 1955. In 1959, she began a torrid romance with fellow up-and-comer Warren Beatty. The relationship burned up the gossip magazines with lurid tales of their non-stop lovemaking, but the affair ended badly, with a broken engagement and an abortion. Collins would later be linked to numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Dennis Hopper, Ryan O’Neal and Robert F. Kennedy.
Our Girl Friday, poster, (aka THE ADVENTURES OF SADIE), US poster, Joan Collins, 1953. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Her reputation sealed her into a series of vampish roles throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In Richard Fleischer’s “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing” (1955), she played Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, whose relationship with architect Stanford White ended with his murder in the 1920s. In “The Opposite Sex” (1956), she was a showgirl who steals faithful husband Leslie Nielsen away from dutiful wife June Allyson. And in “Island in the Sun” (1957), she was the kittenish younger sister of plantation owner James Mason, who uses her wiles to lure war hero Stephen Boyd. On occasion, Collins proved that she had talents beyond her physical appeal; the “Sea Wife” (1957), which was initially helmed by Roberto Rossellini, was a stark character piece about shipwreck survivors adrift in a lifeboat, while the Western “The Bravados” (1958) and the caper picture “Seven Thieves” (1960) showed that she could share the screen with such powerhouses as Gregory Peck, Rod Steiger and Edward G. Robinson. She could also do comedy, as her dizzy town vixen in “Rally Round the Flag, Boys!” (1958) showed. But for the most part, Collins was the go-to for seductive and exotic types, and she played the decorative parts in unmemorable films like “Stopover Tokyo” (1957) with Robert Wagner, “Esther and the King” (1960), and “The Road to Hong Kong” (1962), the final “Road” picture with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
By the mid-1960s, Collins was lending her appeal to American TV shows like “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (NBC, 1964-68), “Batman” (ABC, 1966-68 as The Siren) and a memorable appearance on “Star Trek” (NBC, 1966-69) in the Hugo Award-winning episode “City on the Edge of Forever” as a love interest for Captain Kirk (William Shatner) doomed by a fateful twist in history. Her film career appeared to have stalled completely; among the string of flops to her name during this period was the singularly titled “Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?” (1969), a surreal ego trip directed by her second husband, singer and songwriter Anthony Newley. Collins would later attribute the film as a leading factor in her 1973 divorce from him.
The 1970s saw Collins continue to toil in episodic television and low-budget films. Horror and exploitation soon became her forte, with appearances in the anthology films “Tales from the Crypt” (1972) as a woman threatened by a homicidal Santa Claus, and “Tales that Witness Madness” (1973) in which her jealous wife suspects that her husband has fallen in love with a very feminine and vengeful tree. In 1978, she starred in softcore adaptations of her sister Jackie’s novels “The Stud;” the film, which featured copious nudity by Collins as a predatory nightclub owner, was a sizable hit, as was its sequel, the equally tawdry “The Bitch” (1979). Both saw financial returns that rivaled the Bond series in ticket sales.
In 1981, Collins’ career received its biggest boost and greatest exposure when she was cast as Alexis Carrington on “Dynasty.” Originally considered as a role for Sophia Loren, among others, Alexis was introduced in the second season of “Dynasty” as a key witness in the trial of the show’s patriarch, Blake Carrington (John Forsythe), for the murder of his son Steven’s gay lover. Her testimony about her former husband throws a wrench into the defense, and Alexis soon proves herself to be a world-class upsetter in the Carrington clan, wreaking havoc with Blake’s new wife, Krystal (Linda Evans), daughter Fallon (Pamela Sue Martin) and just about every male, available or otherwise, that crosses her path. Audiences soon flocked to see what witchery Alexis would conduct each week, as well as the regular room-wrecking catfights she would conduct with Evans and later Diahann Carroll and Stephanie Beacham. A combination of Collins and a new writing staff helped to elevate “Dynasty” past its chief competitor, “Dallas” (CBS, 1978-1991), all of which re-energized Collins’ career. She would eventually net six Golden Globe nominations between 1982 and 1987, and took home one in 1983.
The late-in-life success of Collins allowed her to make the rounds in numerous glitzy TV-movies and miniseries, most notably “Sins” (CBS, 1986) and “Monte Carlo” (CBS, 1987), on which she also served as producer. She surprised many with a 12-page layout in Playboy under the rubric “50 is Beautiful.” She also began a very popular second career as an author and magazine contributor, penning several books on beauty, as well as a handful of glossy novels that hewed closely to sister Jackie’s style. There was also Katy: A Fight for Life (1982), a memoir of her daughter Katy’s struggle after being struck by a car in 1980 and enduring severe brain injuries.
However, her relationship with “Dynasty” producers Aaron Spelling and E. Duke Vincent began to sour by its sixth season. She was arguably the show’s key attraction, and as such, demanded a larger salary for her efforts. As a result, she missed the first episode of the sixth season, which followed the infamous “Moldavian Massacre,” which closed the fifth season with nearly all the major characters appearing to be killed in a coup during a wedding. Eventually, Collins got her wishes – a reported $60,000 per episode – but the writing was on the wall for “Dynasty.” The show slogged through its next nine seasons before ABC pulled the plug, ending Alexis’ reign on primetime with – what else? A cliffhanger, which was finally resolved in 1991 with the four-hour miniseries “Dynasty: The Reunion” (ABC).
But Collins was not quite out of the scandal sheets yet. A 1991 book deal with Random House resulted in a lawsuit that demanded the actress return the $1.2 million advance she had received after submitting manuscripts that they deemed unsuitable. She countersued for the remaining $4 million in the deal, and, astoundingly, won the case in 1996 thanks to her deal from super agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar, who had stipulated that Collins would be paid whether the manuscripts were published or not. The resulting judgment – Collins was allowed to keep the advance, as well as $1 million for one of the completed manuscripts – landed her in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest payment for an unpublished book.
Undaunted, Collins began focusing her attention on the theater. A revival of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” launched in London’s West End in 1991 before traveling to Broadway in 1992. She would return to the stage on numerous occasions through the ’90s and 2000s, most notably in a tour of “Love Letters” with George Hamilton and a West End production of “Moon Over Buffalo” with Frank Langella. Meanwhile, film and television continued to provide Collins with diva-esque roles in Kenneth Branagh’s “A Midwinter’s Tale” (1995), the Emmy-nominated “Annie: A Royal Adventure” (ABC, 1995), and “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas” (2000), which cast her as Fred Flintstone’s glammed-up mother-in-law, Pearl Slaghoople. She wrapped up the ’90s with the receipt of an O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Her “Dynasty” past was never quite far behind, though. In 1997, Aaron Spelling brought her to his primetime soap “Pacific Palisades” (Fox, 1997) in a last-ditch attempt to save the series. It did not work, but she was back in the trenches in 2000 with a guest shot on “The Guiding Light” (CBS, 1952-2009) and in 2005 on the U.K. series “Footballers Wives” (ITV, 2002-06). She also reunited with Linda Evans for the play “Legends!” which ran for a 30-week tour of North America. And in 2010, she joined the cast of the German soap “Forbidden Love” (Das Erste, 1995) for a short stint. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Aldo Ray was born in Pennsylvania of Italian parents. He won a starring part in his first film “The Marrying Kind” opposite Judy Holliday directed by George Cukor. In the 1950’s his career was at it’s peak. He appeared with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in “Pat and Mike”, opposite Humphrey Bogart in “We’re No Angels” and Rita Hayworth in “Miss Sadie Thompson”. Sadly his career declined and by the 80’s he was featuring in cheap poorly made films. He died in 1991.
TCM Overview:
Gravel-voiced, thick-set former Navy frogman who was running for constable of Crockett, CA, when he drove his brother to an audition for the film “Saturday’s Hero” (1951) and was hired instead by director David Miller. Early in Ray’s career he starred in romantic leads, as one of the reminiscing lovers in George Cukor’s “The Marrying Kind” (1951) and opposite Rita Hayworth in “Miss Sadie Thompson” (1953). In comic roles, Ray was the none-too-bright boxer in Cukor’s “Pat and Mike” (1952) and an escaped convict in Michael Curtiz’s “We’re No Angels” (1955). By the mid-50s Ray was typecast as a hot-blooded, gung-ho character in action films and as GIs in “Battle Cry” (1955), “Men in War” (1957) and his last major film, “The Green Berets” (1968) with John Wayne.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
For a brief time in 1970 and 1971, Ali MacGraw was the top female film actress internationally. The word wide success of the film “Love Story” gave her huge public recognition. Previously she had been a high fashion model with one major fim role to her credit “Goodbye Columbus”. After the sucess of “Love Story”,, she had her pick of scripys and choose to do t”The Getaway” with Steve McQueen.
After completing that film she put her career on hold to spend time with and ultimately marry McQueen. When she returned to film making in 1978 with Kris Kristofferson in “Convey”, her career momentum was lost and she never regained her former cinema stature. She had a lead role in the TV series “The Winds of War” and then took a part in “Dynasty”. She has written her her autobiography which is called “Moving Pictures” .
TCM overview:
A dark-haired, somber-looking former model, Ali MacGraw gained instant screen stardom as the archetypal ‘Jewish American Princess’ in “Goodbye, Columbus” (1969). The following year, she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination as the doomed collegiate heroine of the saccharine but extremely popular “Love Story” (1970). At the time, she was married to Paramount executive Robert Evans who developed several projects for her, including “The Great Gatsby”. MacGraw, however, created tabloid headlines when she left Evans for Steve McQueen, her co-star in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Getaway” (1972). After her 1973 marriage to McQueen, MacGraw’s screen appearances tapered off until the couple divorced in 1978.
Although she had some limitations as an actress, she was effective in the comic role of Alan King’s mistress in “Just Tell Me What You Want” (1980). For much of the 80s, MacGraw found employment on the small screen, but was often cast in roles that demanded more than her abilities could deliver. She seemed miscast as the Jewish daughter-in-law of Robert Mitchum in the mammoth ABC miniseries “War and Remembrance” (1983) and was equally wrong as the sophisticated Lady Ashley Mitchell for the 1984-85 season of “Dynasty” (ABC). After publishing her memoirs in 1991, MacGraw concentrated on a career as a designer, appearing in the occasional project like her son Josh Evans’ first feature “Glam” (1997).
The above TCM overview can alo be accessed online here.
Article on Ali MacGraw in “Vanity Fair” can be accessed here.
Hurd Hatfield was born in 1917 in New York City. He came to fame with his role in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” with Angela Lansbury. His other roles include “El Cid”, “King of Kings” and “The Boston Strangler”. He lived in Ireland and died there in 1998.
Crimes of the Heart
King of Kings
El Cid
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Boston Strangler
The Left Handed Gun
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Destination Murder
His obituary by Tom Vallance in “The Independent”:
THE ACTOR Hurd Hatfield will always be associated with the film role that made him a star, that of the aesthetic young man who remains youthful through the years while a portrait of himself in the attic displays the aberrations of his life, in MGM’s film version of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
He would later say, however, that the role was a curse as well as a blessing, for within five years he was appearing in B movies, and throughout the rest of his life he would be associated with that single role, despite a long and varied career in film, television and particularly theatre. “I have been haunted by The Picture of Dorian Gray,” he said. “New York, London, anywhere I’m making a personal appearance, people will talk about other things but they always get back to Dorian Gray.” Coincidentally, until recently Hatfield’s appearance remained remarkably youthful, and he became accustomed to being asked if he kept a painting of himself in his attic.
He was born William Rukard Hurd Hatfield in New York City in 1918. He won a scholarship to study acting at Michael Chekhov’s Dartington Hall company in Devon, England, and made his professional debut in the spring of 1939 playing the Baron in scenes from The Lower Depths at the company’s theatre. Returning to the United States with Chekhov’s company, he toured as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Caleb Plummer in Cricket on the Hearth, and Gloucester in King Lear, before making his Broadway debut as Kirilov in The Possessed (1939).
This adaptation of several Dostoevsky works into one sombre 15-scene play ran for only 14 performances, with both the acting and Chekhov’s direction deemed excessively stylised. While the company was playing on the West Coast, Hatfield was signed by MGM and cast as Lao San in the studio’s 1944 adaptation of Pearl Buck’s epic novel Dragon Seed, about the effect of Japanese invasion on a family of Chinese farmers. “That was some experience,” said Hatfield later. “A nightmare! Walter Huston was my father, Katharine Hepburn my sister, Aline MacMahon from New York my mother, Turkish Turhan Bey my brother, Russian Akim Tamiroff my uncle – it was a very odd Chinese family!”
Hatfield then auditioned for the role of vain young sensualist who trades his soul for eternal youth in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). “Oscar Wilde’s original Dorian is blond and blue-eyed,” he said later, “and here I was, this gloomy-looking creature. I almost didn’t go to the audition, and when I did, all these blond Adonises were to the right and left of me. I looked like one of their agents!”
The director Albert Lewin had just written and directed a successful transcription of Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, and he was given a large budget to make an opulent and literate version of Wilde’s novel, though critics objected to the many liberties that were taken with the story. The strict censorship of the time worked to some extent in the film’s favour, making the suggestions of corruption and decadence all the more telling for being oblique.
Harry Stradling’s photography, which blazed into colour from black-and- white when it showed the ageing, increasingly dissolute portrait (by Ivan Albright), won an Academy Award. George Sanders was ideally cast as the cynical misogynist Lord Henry Wotton and Angela Lansbury won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Sybil Vane, the music-hall singer whose plaintive rendition of “Little Yellow Bird” wins Gray’s heart before he is persuaded by Wotton to jilt her cruelly.
Hatfield’s enigmatic, passive performance was given a mixed reception (one critic described his lack of facial animation to that of an actress playing Trilby while under the hypnotic spell of Svengali). Variety reported, “He plays it with little feeling, as apparently intended, and does it well . . . he’s singularly Narcissistic all the way.” The majority felt that the actor’s immobile features and flat tones suggested the mixture of beauty and depravity called for, but although the film was a great success it failed to ignite Hatfield’s film career. “The film didn’t make me popular in Hollywood,” he commented later. “It was too odd, too avant- garde, too ahead of its time. The decadence, the hints of bisexuality and so on, made me a leper! Nobody knew I had a sense of humour, and people wouldn’t even have lunch with me.”
His next film was an independent production, the off-beat Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), adapted by Burgess Meredith from Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel Le Journal d’une femme de chambre and directed by Jean Renoir, who was a great admirer of Paulette Goddard, Meredith’s wife and the star of the film. In this strongly cast production, Hatfield held his own as the consumptive son of a wealthy landowner who finds strength and redemption through the love of a chambermaid, but the film, now regarded as a minor classic, was only a succes d’estime at the time of its release, and Hatfield returned to MGM to play a subsidiary role as one of the scientists working on the atom bomb in the studio’s semi-documentary of the weapon’s development, The Beginning or the End (1947).
He had a better role in Michael Curtiz’s enjoyable thriller The Unsuspected (1947), as an artist driven to alcohol by his wife’s infidelities. In Walter Wanger’s costly but ponderous Joan of Arc (1948), Hatfield played Father Pasquerel, chaplain to Joan (Ingrid Bergman), but, when this was followed by roles as the villain in two B movies, The Checkered Coat (1950, as a psychotic killer called Creepy) and Chinatown at Midnight (1950), he decided to return to the stage.
In 1952 he appeared on Broadway as Dominic in Christopher Fry’s Venus Observed, directed by Laurence Olivier, and the following year played Lord Byron and Don Quixote in Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real, directed by Elia Kazan. He was Prince Paul in the Broadway production of Anastasia (1954), played the title role in Julius Caesar in the inaugural season of the American Shakespeare Festival at Connecticut, Stratford (1955) and appeared as Don John in John Gielgud’s legendary production of Much Ado About Nothing (1959).
He occasionally returned to Hollywood, notably for two sexually ambivalent roles: the epicene follower of Billy the Kid (Paul Newman) in Arthur Penn’s film of Gore Vidal’s The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and a homosexual antique dealer considered a suspect in The Boston Strangler (1968) – the scene in which he is questioned by a liberal police officer (Henry Fonda) was one of the most potent in the film. He was in two of 1965’s epics, King of Kings and El Cid, and in 1986 returned to the screen to play the ailing grandfather of Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Diane Keaton in Crimes of the Heart.
His prolific television work included The Rivals and The Importance of Being Ernest (both 1950), the title roles in The Count of Monte Cristo (1958) and Don Juan in Hell (1960), episodes of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Murder She Wrote, and in 1963 an Emmy-nominated performance as Rothschild in The Invincible Mr Disraeli. In recent years he toured Germany, Northern Ireland, Latvia and Russia in The Son of Whistler’s Mother, a one-man play about James McNeill Whistler, and in July 1997 he made a personal appearance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in connection with an exhibition of paintings by Albright (including Dorian Gray).
A bachelor, Hurd Hatfield had lived for many years on an estate in Ireland (he also owned a house on Long Island), commuting for acting assignments. He recently stated that he had accepted his permanent association with the role of Gray, even though the film had for him been “a terrible ordeal in self- control, everything being so cerebral”. He added, “But not many actors are fortunate enough to have made a classic. One friend told me it’s a good thing I didn’t make Dracula and have my entire professional life dominated by that!”
William Rukard Hurd Hatfield, actor: born New York 7 December 1918; died Monkstown, Co Cork 25 December 1998.
For “The Independent” obituary on Hurd Hatfield, please click here.
George Brent made his screen debut in “Under Suspicion” (1930). Initially a slightly tough talking New York type, Brent proved an effective romantic foil to a wide variety of dominant female stars of the 1930s and 40s, most notably at Warner Brothers, where he was tenured from 1932 to 1942. Capable of playing the strong but silent type, or the urbane and cynical, Brent often spent his screen time desiring his leading lady or being pursued by her. His playing was invariably professional and amiable if not dynamic or idiosyncratic, and so he proved a natural in “women’s films” in which the focus was securely on a more galvanizing female actor who was a bigger star. Among his female paramours over the years were Bebe Daniels (“42nd Street,” 1933), Greta Garbo (“The Painted Veil,” 1934), Ginger Rogers (“In Person,” 1935), Myrna Loy (“The Rains Came,” 1939), Barbara Stanwyck (“My Reputation,” 1946), and Claudette Colbert (“Bride for Sale,” 1949).
Brent most often appeared as romantic lead in deferential support to three of Warners’ classiest star actresses: Kay Francis (“Living on Velvet,” 1935, “Give Me Your Heart,” 1936, “Secrets of an Actress,” 1938); Ruth Chatterton (“The Crash,” 1932, “Female,” 1933), to whom he was married from 1932 to 1934; and, particularly, Bette Davis (“Front Page Woman,” 1935, “Jezebel,” 1938, “Dark Victory,” 1939, “The Great Lie,” 1941). He also occasionally enjoyed a role off the beaten path, as in Robert Siodmak’s memorable Gothic melodrama, “The Spiral Staircase” (1946).
Brent sustained his prolific output after he and Warners parted company, but his films gradually diminished in importance in the later 40s. Very much a leading man type, he never made the transition to character roles, and so left the cinema in 1953 after appearing in a series of minor efforts. Two of his other four wives were actresses Constance Worth and Ann Sheridan (opposite whom he made “Honeymoon for Three,” 1941). Brent came out of retirement for 1978’s “Born Again”. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
For an article on George Brewnt please click here.
Angel On The Amazon, poster, US poster art, George Brent (left), Constance Bennett (second left), Vera Ralston (center), 1948. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Submarine D-1, poster, Wayne Morris, Pat O’Brien, George Brent on window card, 1937. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)TWIN BEDS, US poster, top from left: George Brent, Joan Bennett, bottom: Mischa Auer, 1942 Courtesy Everett Collection ACHTUNG AUFNAHMEDATUM GESCHÄTZT PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xCourtesyxEverettxCollectionx MCDTWBE EC002The Purchase Price, poster, from left: George Brent, Barbara Stanwyck, 1932. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)The Great Lie, poster, George Brent, Bette Davis, 1941. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Brent, George (1904–79), actor, was born George Nolan 15 March 1904 at Main St., Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, son of John Nolan, shopkeeper, and Mary Nolan (née McGuinness). Orphaned in 1915, he moved briefly to New York where he was cared for by an aunt, returning later to Dublin to finish his education. He took up acting at the Abbey Theatre, where he had already played some minor roles but, suspected by the British authorities of IRAinvolvement, he fled to Canada, where he continued to act, working in stock companies for two years. He again travelled to New York, finding work with stock companies and founding three of his own. His appearances on Broadway in the late 1920s were noticed in Hollywood. He was talented, but his good looks and reliability were as important in ensuring that he achieved over a hundred screen credits during his career. Most of these were in Warner Brothers productions (1930–53).
Never a powerful box-office draw, he was employed by the studio to carry middle-ranking projects while providing support to A-list stars in larger undertakings. Unambitious and without pretensions, he was happy to take the money while performing quietly and professionally. This led unkind reviewers to describe his performances as having ‘all the animation of a penguin’ and as varying between those in which he was with or without a moustache. Once he abandoned the ‘rugged hero’ roles in which he was initially cast, he provided competent but understated portrayals, making him an ideal foil for the domineering leading ladies of this period. In 1934 he delivered just such a performance opposite Greta Garbo in the screen adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s ‘The painted veil’. He was also a good foil for Merle Oberon, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Mary Astor, Barbara Stanwyck (four times), Ruth Chatterton (four times), and Bette Davis (eleven times). Davis was one of the many leading ladies with whom he had affairs and Ruth Chatterton was the second (1932–4) of his six wives. He married two other actresses, Constance Worth (1937) and Ann Sheridan (1942–3).
His best performances were probably in Jezebel (1938), for which Davis won an Oscar; Dark victory (1939) with Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Ronald Reagan; The rains came (1939), a disaster movie with Tyrone Power; and The spiral staircase (1945), a horror-thriller set in England. He never filmed in Ireland, but starred with James Cagney in a movie about an Irish-American regiment, The fighting 69th (1940). His career entered a terminal slide in the late 1940s when he appeared in dross such as The corpse came C.O.D. (1947), a severe decline for someone who had acted in 42nd Street (1933). When the movie offers dried up he starred in a TV series, Wire service (1956–9), before retiring to run his horse-breeding ranch in California. He made one more brief cameo in the movies playing a judge in the dire Born again (1978), the story of Nixon aide George Colson’s discovery of Christianity when jailed after Watergate. He died of emphysema 27 May 1979 in California
Born to a Catholic nationalist family in Belfast, Ireland. Although her mother died when she was two, her father was a landowner farmer, insuring that the family always had income from family land. He soon left for Australia and McGlade was brought up by an aunt, studying at St. Dominic’s School, Belfast, convent schools and inParis. Thinking she would pursue teaching, she enrolled in the South Kensington School of Art.
Before taking up teaching duties, she enrolled in the Abbey School of Acting (affiliated with Dublin‘s Abbey Theatre). She changed her name when she began her acting career with the Abbey Theatre. One her earliest appearances was in George Bernard Shaw‘s The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet in which she played the part of a swaggering American ranch girl. The production played in Dublin as well as in New York, opening 20 November 1911 at the Maxine Elliott Theatre, marking O’Connor’s American debut. By 1913 she was based inLondon where she appeared in The Magic Jug, Starlight Express (1915-16 at the Kingsway Theatre), and Paddy the Next Best Thing. In the early 1920s she appeared as a cockey maid in Plus Fours followed in 1924 by her portrayal of a cockney waitress in Frederick Lonsdale‘s The Fake. In a single paragraph review, an unnamed reviewer noted “Una O’Connor’s low comedy hotel maid was effectively handled.” The latter show also played in New York (with O’Connor in the cast), opening 6 October 1924 at the Hudson Theatre. A review of the New York performances of The Fake recounts details of the plot, but then mentions
…two players of more than ordinary excellence. In the third act of The Fake occurs a scene between Una O’Connor and Godfrey Tearle, with Miss O’Connor as a waitress trying a crude sort of flirtation with Mr. Tearle. He does not respond at all and the longing, the pathos of this servant girl when she has exhausted her charms and receives no encouragement, is the very epitome of what careful character portrayal should be. Miss O’Connor is on the stage for only this single act, but in that short space of time she registers an indelible impression. Rightly, she scored one of the best hits of the performance.
These two plays in which she portrayed servants and waitresses appear to have portended her future career. Returning to London, she played in The Ring o’ Bells (November 1925), Autumn Fire (March 1926), Distinguished Villa (May 1926), and Quicksands of Youth (July 1926). When Autumn Fire toured the U.S., opening first in Providence, Rhode Island, a critic wrote: “Una O’Connor, who plays Ellen Keegan, the poor drudge of a daughter, bitter against life and love, does fine work. Her excellence will undoubtedly win her the love of an American public.”
She made her first appearance on film in the 1929 Dark Red Roses, followed by Murder! (1930) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and an uncredited part in To Oblige a Lady (1931).
Distinguished Villa, a play by Kate O\’Brien, Little Theatre, London, starring Una O\’Connor and Ivor Barnard.
1926
Despite her lengthy apprenticeship she had not attracted much attention. British critic Eric Johns recalled meeting her in 1931 in which she confessed “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t get work…The end of my savings is in sight and unless something happens soon, I’ll not be able to pay the rent.”[Her luck changed when she was chosen by Noël Coward to appear in Cavalcade at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1933. Expressing surprise that Coward noticed her, Coward responded that he had watched her for years and wrote the part with her in mind. She portrayed an Edwardian servant who transforms herself into a self-made woman. When the curtain came down after a performance attended by Hollywood executives, they exclaimed to each other “We must have that Irish woman. That is obvious.” Her success led her to to reprise her role in the film version of Cavalcade, and with its success, O’Connor decided to remain in the United States.
Among O’Connor’s most successful and best remembered roles are her comic performances in Whale’s The Invisible Man (1933) as the publican’s wife and in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) as the Baron’s housekeeper. She appeared in such films as The Informer (1935). Feeling homesick, in 1937 she went back to London for twelve months in the hope of finding a good part but found nothing that interested her. While in England she appeared in three television films. After her return to America, the storage facility that housed her furniture and car was destroyed in one of The Blitz strikes, which she took as a sign to remain in America.
Her film career continued notably with The Bells of St. Mary’s (1944). She also appeared in supporting roles in various stage productions and achieved an outstanding success in the role of “Janet McKenzie”, the nearly deaf housemaid, in Agatha Christie‘s Witness for the Prosecution at Henry Miller’s Theatre on Broadway from 1954–56; she also appeared in the film version in 1957, directed by Billy Wilder. As one of the witnesses, in what was essentially a serious drama, O’Connor’s character was intended to provide comic relief. It was her final film performance.
After a break from her initial forays in television, she took up the medium again by 1950. In 1952 she was able to state that she had been in 38 production that year alone. In a rare article that she authored, O’Connor called working in television “the most exacting and nerve-racking experience that has ever come my way. It is an attempt to do two things at once, a combination of stage and screen techniques with the compensations of neither…” Noting that many actors dislike television work, O’Connor said that she liked it because it allowed her to play many parts. She lamented that preparation for television work was too short a period for an actor to fully realize the depths of role characterization, but that it showed an actor’s mettle by the enormous amount of work needed. “Acting talent alone is not enough for the job. It requires intense concentration, an alert-quickmindedness that can take changes in direction at the last minute…” O’Connor concluded presciently: “It sounds fantastic and that is just exactly what it is, but it also an expanding field of employment that has come to stay. As such it is more than welcome here, where the living theatre seems determinedly headed the opposite way.”
Reportedly she was “happily resigned” to being typecast as a servant. “There’s no such thing as design in an acting career. You just go along with the tide. Nine times out of ten one successful part will set you in a rut from which only a miracle can pry you.”
Her weak heart was detected as early as 1932, when her arrival in America began with detention at Ellis Island because of a “congenital heart condition.” By the time of her appearance in the stage version of Witness for the Prosecution she had to stay in bed all day, emerging only to get to the theater and then leaving curtain calls early to return to her bed. Her appearance in the film version was intended to be her last.
Eric Johns described O’Connor as
…a frail little woman, with enormous eyes that reminded one of a hunted animal. She could move one to tears with the greatest of ease, and just as easily reduce an audience to helpless laughter in comedies of situation. She was mistress of the art of making bricks without straw. She could take a very small part, but out of the paltry lines at her disposal, create a real flesh-and-blood creature, with a complete and credible life of its own.
She admired John Galsworthy and claimed to have read all his works. She once said “Acting is a gift from God. It is like a singer’s voice. I might quite easily wake up one morning to find that it has been taken from me.”
Barry Coe was an Americanactor who appeared in film and on television from 1956-1978. Many of his motion pictures parts were minor, but he co-starred in one series, Follow the Sun, which aired on ABC during the 1961-1962 season, and also played the recognizable “Mr. Goodwrench” on TV commercials in the 1970s and 1980s.
Born Barry Clark Heacock, his name was changed to Joseph Spalding Coe when his mother Jean Elizabeth Shea married Joseph Spalding Coe Sr. in 1940 in Los Angeles. His father Francis Elmer “Frank” Heacock, a writer and publicist for Warner Brothers, was killed in an auto accident in North Hollywood, CA, April 5, 1940.
Coe attended the University of Southern California and was discovered by a talent scout during a trip with his fraternity to Palm Springs in the mid-1950s. He was signed under contract for 20th Century Fox as an actor.
In 1961 Coe and Brett Halsey played magazinewriters Paul Templin and Ben Gregory, respectively, with Gary Lockwood as their researcher, Eric Jason on the ABC television network series Follow the Sun from September 17, 1961, through April 8, 1962. The program was set in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the writers often ventured into private detective work. Despite some memorable episodes, Follow the Sun was cancelled after twenty-nine segments.
After Follow the Sun folded, Coe appeared in a support role in Fox’s The 300 Spartans (1962)[6] then guest starred in 1962 on the first episode of the fourth season of NBC‘s Western series Bonanza. He portrayed ranch hand Clay Stafford, who reveals himself to be the “fifth” Cartwright, a half brother to Little Joe (Michael Landon) via their mother Marie. Although stepfather Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) and Joe take Clay at his word, the other Cartwright brothers, Hoss (Dan Blocker) and Adam (Pernell Roberts) are skeptical and intend to investigate Clay’s claim. The episode called “The First Born” could have introduced Coe as a new cast member. Entertainment writer Hal Ericson reported that friction (i.e. job security) on the set caused Bonanza producers to stick with the three brothers.
From the late 1970s into the early 1980s, Coe was “Mr. Goodwrench” in television advertising for a chain of national auto parts stores under General Motors.[4]
Until his death, Coe was married to the former Jorunn Kristiansen, who was a Norwegian beauty queen in the 1950s and now a painter (born 1940). Their son is William Shea Coe (born 1966). In the 1980s, Barry Coe’s daughter attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Barry Coe had a side business in nutritional supplements—Adventures in Nutrition; labels for the containers were printed by Joe Faust. He lived in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California for several years.
