Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 14 of 126

Marjorie Reynolds

“Guardian” obituary from 1997:”Marjorie Reynolds, a blonde newcomer,” enthused Variety, “is a comely looker of much talent, poise and versatility, who will certainly calendar her own professional prominence from the springboard of this Crosby- Astaire filmusical.” The curious use of the word “calendar” (to denote “gain”) can be explained by the fact that the film under review was Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn (1942). The use of the word “newcomer” is also curious; the 21-year-old Miss Reynolds was then the veteran of more than 40 films, having made her screen debut 19 years earlier.

Born Marjorie Goodspeed, she was taken to Los Angeles as a small child and enrolled in dance classes by her ambitious mother. As Marjorie Moore, she was soon appearing on the silent screen with Ramon Navarro in Scaramouche (1923), and with Viola Dana in Revelation (1924). After a brief retirement, she returned to make her first talkie, John Barrymore’s Svengali (1931). She played small roles in College Humour (1933) and The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935), both of which starred her future leading man Bing Crosby. After College Holiday (1936), Broadway Melody of 1938 and Champagne Waltz (both 1937), she appeared with Tex Ritter in Tex Rides With the Boy Scouts (1938), the first of 14 small-budget westerns she would make in the next four years, opposite such sagebrush stars as Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, Bob Baker, George O’Brien, Tim Holt and Roy Rogers. In between she toiled in equally low-rent thrillers.

Less than a week before Holiday Inn went into production, Paramount Pictures had yet to find a suitable leading lady. Their problem was solved when the choreographer Danny Dare recommended an actress/ dancer with whom he had worked on various musicals. The studio wasted precious time searching for Marjorie Moore before learning that she’d changed her name in 1937, after marrying one Jack Reynolds.

Once they had found and screen-tested her, she was eagerly signed and flung into dance rehearsals with Fred Astaire. True, she wasn’t much of a singer, but since when has that ever posed a problem to Hollywood? Martha Mears dubbed her vocals, and Paramount were so pleased with her performance in Holiday Inn that they awarded her a seven-year contract, and cast her opposite Crosby again in Dixie (1943), the alleged biography of the composer Dan Emmett, in which, as his loyal wife, she inspired the writing of the title song. She gave an impressive dramatic performance as a Viennese refugee in Fritz Lang’s film version of Graham Greene’s Ministry of Fear (1945), and made a ravishingly beautiful princess in the Bob Hope romp, Monsieur Beaucaire (1946). She was loaned to Universal for one of Abbott and Costello’s better vehicles, The Time of Their Lives (1946), in which she and Costello played ghosts doomed to haunt a stately mansion until they had proved they weren’t traitors during the American Revolution. In a clever special effect, the two ghosts had a head-on collision, but simply passed through, ending up wearing one another’s clothes. Reynolds, who was pregnant throughout the filming, said later, “I just wanted to get it over with.”

When her Paramount contract expired, she appeared in Mario Lanza’s first starring film, That Midnight Kiss (1949), and then in a trio of “B” pictures that suggested the action quickies she ground out in the 1930s: Customs Agent, The Great Jewel Robbery and Rookie Fireman (all 1950). For MGM she made a film calculated to endear the studio to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Called Home Town Story (1951), and financed by a top executive of General Motors, it was the story of a liberal newspaper editor who learned that Big Business wasn’t a heartless monolith, when his little sister was buried in a cave-in, and the owner of the town’s largest firm organised her rescue. Marilyn Monroe made an early screen appearance in this oddity.

Reynolds entered television when William Bendix chose her to play his dutiful wife in the sitcom The Life of Riley (1953-58). After Riley, there were guest appearances in various television series, but few films, the last of which was The Silent Witness (1962).

In 1987, asked by a journalist from Classic Image magazine whether she would welcome a big screen comeback, Marjorie Reynolds replied, “Sure, I’d like to click and become a box office tornado, but, if I don’t, I’ve got no kick coming. Personally, I like Hollywood and I like pictures. But that doesn’t mean I have any illusions about either.”

Marjorie Goodspeed (Marjorie Reynolds), actress: born Buhl, Idaho 12 August 1921; married 1937 Jack Reynolds (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1952), 1953 Jon M. Haffen (died 1985); died Manhattan Beach, California 1 February 1997.

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

: Bruce Yarnell

Bruce Yarnell

Convicts 4, poster, top l-r: Ben Gazzara, Stuart Whitman, Ray Walston, Sammy Davis Jr, bottom: Rod Steiger on poster art, 1962. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

“Guardian” obituary from 2001.

Ray Walston, who has died aged 83, was short, bald, had a clownish face and a penetrating, strangely articulated voice – ideal to play an extra-terrestrial, which he did from 1963 to 1966 on television in My Favourite Martian. The comic situations derived from Walston’s deadpan humour as the character struggles to adapt to a more primitive civilisation, his ability to appear and disappear uncontrollably, read minds, speak to animals and levitate.Walston was a down-to-earth character, who hated to be identified as the Martian for so long. He preferred to be remembered for two hit Broadway – and screen – musicals, South Pacific and Damn Yankees, his roles in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment and Kiss Me, Stupid, and a string of character parts.

Walston was born in New Orleans, and made his professional debut for the Community Players in Houston, Texas, in 1938, playing Buddy in High Tor. It took him a few years, after working as a printer and reporter, before he returned to the profession. From playing an attendant in the Maurice Evans Hamlet in 1945 in New York, he went on to appear on Broadway in The Front Page, The Alchemist, and Tennessee Williams’s Summer And Smoke, before landing the role of the conniving marine, Luther Billis, in the touring production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific in 1950. He repeated the role for two years at London’s Drury Lane, staged by Joshua Logan, who also directed Walston in the 1958 film version. Walston survived Logan’s stodgy direction, stealing every scene in which he appeared.

Before he made his film debut in 1957 as Cary Grant’s naval sidekick in Stanley Donen’s Kiss Them For Me, Walston sang in three more Broadway musicals, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Me And Juliet, Harold Arlen’s House Of Flowers and George Abbott’s Damn Yankees. In the last, for which he received a Tony, and in the 1958 movie, Walston played a deliciously wicked and frustrated Devil in the human form of an entrepreneur called Mr Applegate, stopping the show with Those Were The Good Old Days.

In 1960, Walston made The Apartment, in which he was one of the bosses using underling Jack Lemmon’s pad for assignations; a shifty chauffeur bringing some reality into the risible soap opera Portrait in Black; a title character in Convicts 4, and a professor trying to help student Anthony Perkins pass an exam to permit him to play in a basketball game in Josh Logan’s Tall Story.

In 1963 Walston appeared as Mr Quimby, the shop manager in the Frank Tashlin-Jerry Lewis comedy, Who’s Minding The Store?, and returned to the big screen in Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). He got the part of Orville J Spooner when Peter Sellers suffered a heart attack. “Both my wife and I sat down and read the script,” Walston recalled, “and I said when I finished it, ‘It’s not good, it’s not good.’ But one doesn’t say that about a Billy Wilder- IAL Diamond script. The feeling was that they would repair it.” They did, and Walston was amusing as a jealous piano teacher and would-be songwriter in Climax, Nevada, who sends his wife away while horny crooner Dean Martin is staying with him, hiring local hooker Kim Novak to play his wife.

“I had a line, when I first bring Kim Novak into the house: ‘Well, it’s not very big but it’s clean.’ And they wanted it done with a slight look from her as if it meant my cock. ‘Hey, Ray,’ Wilder said. ‘Vat are the keedies gonna tink about you ven this film is released?’

“I replied, ‘What are people gonna say about you? How do you think you’re gonna get away with some of this stuff?’ “

IAL Diamond’s wife had her own thoughts: “They should have waited for Peter Sellers to recover, Ray Walston was too unattractive a personality.” She was right in that Walston seldom heeded the exhortatory song You Gotta Have Heart from Damn Yankees, his performances tending towards caricature.

Walston worked on into the 1990s playing the race announcer in on a scam in The Sting (1973), one of the two killers pursuing Gene Wilder in Silver Streak (1976), Poopdeck Pappy in Robert Altman’s Popeye (1981), and the quirky schoolteacher in Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982), a part he repeated in the TV series Fast Times. Aged 75, Walston gave one of his best, and warmest, performances in Of Mice And Men (1992) as the veteran farmworker Candy, heartbroken at his old dog having to be put down.

Walston is survived by his wife, daughter and two grandchildren.

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

IMDB entry:

Niall MacGinnis is not as well known outside of Europe, but he was a wonderful character actor whose variety of roles matched his great gift for characterization and the look beyond just makeup that he projected. He was educated at Stonyhurst College and Trinity College, Dublin. He obtained a basic medical education which qualified him as a house (resident) surgeon during World War II in the Royal Navy. But after the war he decided to pursue acting. He worked in stage repertoire and stock companies and moved on to do significant stage work at the Old Vic Theatre in London, where John Gielgud was director and Shakespeare has a particular focus. MacGinnis had the burly look of a farm hand with a large head and curly hair falling away from a progressively receding hairline. He could portray a broad enough accent – or little at all, as the case might be – which could entail any part of the British Isles.

He moved on to film work in 1935 when British sound cinema was hitting its stride. He met young but well experienced director Michael Powell, who was eager to sell his script for an intriguing film to be shot on the furthest island from the north coast of the UK, Foulda. Alexander Korda was impressed and optioned the production of this script forThe Edge of the World (1937), and MacGinnis got the nod as the central protagonist, Andrew Gray. Soon after in 1938, MacGinnis worked with Old Vic mentor and director Gielgud for a role in an early TV production of the play “Spring Meeting” (1938). As the war years ensued and before his own service, MacGinnis did several war effort films, most notably asked by Powell to take the role of a German U-boat cook in 49th Parallel(1941). The film sported a great ensemble cast, including Leslie Howard and Raymond Massey, and was shot in Canada where the drama unfolded, but it lacked the drive to keep the story vital. MacGinnis shone as the good-natured peasant who loved food and had no use for Nazi strictures and warring on the world. Luckily for Powell, the movie with its flag waving spirit was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

By the late 1940s, MacGinnis was donning historical garb for what would be some of his most familiar roles. Olivier remembered him and gave him small but standout roles in both his Henry V (1944) and Hamlet (1948). At about that time MacGinnis began associations with American film actors and production money coming over to Britain, the first being with Fredric March and his wife Florence Eldridge in Christopher Columbus(1949). He finally came to American shores with an appearance on Broadway in “Caesar and Cleopatra” in late 1951 through April of 1952. In 1952 back in England, he had a supporting role as the Herald in a screen version of the story of Thomas a’ Becket titledMurder in the Cathedral (1951). Interestingly, he was also in the much better known and Hollywood-financed Becket (1964), as one of the four murderous barons. When MGM came back to England to follow up its previous visit and subsequent huge hit, Ivanhoe(1952), with Knights of the Round Table (1953), MacGinnis had a brief but again noticeable role as the Green Knight, bound by loss of combat to Robert Taylor as Ivanhoe. The next year brought one of his rare lead roles, an exemplary one in every measure. As Luther in Martin Luther (1953), MacGinnis joined a mostly British cast in a US/West German co-production and American director Irving Pichel with West German and historical scenery topped with a first rate script with American and German co-writers. It received two Oscar nominations.

Into the later 1950s, MacGinnis held to a steady diet of sturdy movie roles, usually supporting but always memorable because of his great acting skill. Historically, he went further back in time with several films of epic Ancient Greece, first as King Menelaus inHelen of Troy (1956), an American/Italian co-production with Robert Wise directing. That same year he stayed on the continent for another epic, this time Alexander the Great(1956) with American director Robert Rossen in an US/Spanish co-production that enlisted another first tier British cast, centered on box office idol Richard Burton, along with former co-star Freddy March. MacGinnis finally made it to Mount Olympus – that is, playing Zeus – in the rousing US/UK co-production of Jason and the Argonauts (1963), certainly best remembered for the stop motion animation magic of Ray Harryhausen.

Yet, MacGinnis’ perhaps best remembered role – certainly to discriminating fans of horror/fantasy – was that of two-faced Dr. Julian Karswell, jocular magician – but deadly serious cult leader and demon conjurer (loosely based on the outrageous English social rebel and occultist Aleister Crowley). The film Curse of the Demon (1957) (the American cut was renamed “Curse of the Demon”) was a stylishly atmospheric and convincingly spooky outing directed by Val Lewton, the protégé of Hollywood veteran film directorJacques Tourneur, best known for Cat People (1942). Based on M.R. James‘ Edwardian ghost story, “Casting the Runes,” the film is now considered a classic of the genre with MacGinnis, sporting a devilish goatee, having fun with his split personality but also effectively betraying his inward fear of the powers he has unleashed. He easily stole the show from co-star Dana Andrews, as the stubborn American psychologist almost done in by the demon he does not believe exists.

Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, MacGinnis kept to up a fairly steady stream of varied historical and contemporary movie roles, always noticeable, and in some of the high profile films of the period, including: Billy Budd (1962), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and the Cinerama adventure Krakatoa: East of Java (1968). There were some TV spots as well to showcase his character-molding talents into the year of his passing to round out a body of over 75 screen appearances.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: William McPeak

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Ruth Warrick

James McCaffrey was born in 1959 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an actor and producer, known for Rescue Me (2004), Max Payne (2001) and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003) Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland; he was raised in Albany, New York. Attended the University of New Haven on a football, baseball, and Fine Arts scholarships.After graduating from college, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he earned a living as an artist, graphic designer, and commercial art director. He also worked as a bartender at Gatsby’s Restaurant on Boylston Street. Has been a member of ‘The Actors Studio’ since 1987, and co-owned ‘The Workhouse Theatre’ in Tribeca, New York City from 1992-99.

Warren Christie was born on November 4, 1975 in Belfast, Northern Ireland as Hans Warren Christie. He is an actor, known for Apollo 18 (2011), This Means War (2012) andAlphas (2011). He has been married to Sonya Salomaa since 2007.

Ronald Bergan’s 2001 “Guardian” obituary:

Virginia O’Brien, who has died aged 79, appeared in 16 movies between 1940 and 1947, mostly in small roles or merely to deliver a speciality number or two. Yet this singular singer was very much part of that great escapist era during which MGM musicals dominated.O’Brien, nicknamed variously The Diva of Deadpan and Miss Red Hot Frozen Face, was an attractive brunette, with a deep voice, who delivered her songs in an unsmiling sphinx-like manner, her lovely dark eyes unblinking, her face hardly moving a muscle, although her neck sometimes jutted back and forwards.

A typically memorable moment was her acidly comic rendering of In A Little Spanish Town in the all-star cavalcade Thousands Cheer (1943), in contrast to the sweetly-sung version by Gloria De Haven and June Allyson, who flanked her. In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), after Fred Astaire has sung Bring On The Beautiful Girls – who appear in pink, on a merry-go-round, seated on live horses – the staring O’Brien, astride a vigorous fake white horse, pleads Bring On The Wonderful Men.

Born in Los Angeles, Virginia Lee O’Brien was related to Civil War General Robert E Lee, and she was named after his home state. Her Irish father was the captain of detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department and later the city’s deputy district attorney. One of her uncles was the film director Lloyd Bacon, whose credits include 42nd Street.

At North Hollywood high school, Virginia took dancing and singing lessons. In 1939, aged 17, modelling herself on her idol, Ethel Merman, “moving my arms and singing up a storm,” in the stage show Meet the People, she won an MGM contract.

Before she made her screen debut, however, O’Brien appeared on Broadway in the revue Keep Off The Grass, which starred Jimmy Durante. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson called her, “a deadpan singer who convulses the audience by removing the ecstasy from high pressure music”.

Her first film for MGM, Hullabaloo (1940), in which she played a wisecracking manicurist, allowed her to interpret two songs in her inimitable poker-faced style. In Lady Be Good (1941), she partnered comedian Red Skelton for the first time as his kooky girlfriend, who is only happy “when she’s eating”. In the Marx Brothers comedy, The Big Store (1941), she was a salesgirl whose raucous rendition of Rock-A-Bye-Baby would have woken any tiny tot. She delivered three numbers in Panama Hattie (1941), including Did I Get Stinkin’ At The Savoy?, which the star of the film, Ann Sothern, refused to sing because she thought it in bad taste. O’Brien, with her expressionless delivery, managed to get away with it.

In 1942, she married actor Kirk Alyn, who was to become the Superman of serials after the war. They had two daughters and a son. In fact, she was pregnant with her first child while making the exuberant Judy Garland musical The Harvey Girls (1946). As Alma, one of the waitresses out west, her part got smaller and smaller as she got larger. Still, she had an enchanting number with Garland and Cyd Charisse in night-gowns called It’s A Great Big World.

Her largest previous role had been as the lovestruck cigarette girl in love with Red Skelton in Du Barry Was A Lady (1943), in which she sang Salome Was The Grandma of Them All. In Meet The People (1944), O’Brien sang Say We’re Sweethearts Again, which contains the lyric “I never knew our romance had ended till you tried to poison my food.” It became her most requested song when she did cabaret.

Her penultimate picture at MGM was the Jerome Kern biopic Till The Clouds Roll By (1946), in which she performed Life Upon The Wicked Stage, and A Fine Romance. She was then co-starred with Red Skelton again in Merton Of The Movies (1947).

Of her role, Variety wrote “Virginia O’Brien proves herself a capable leading lady without recourse to deadpan vocaling. The erstwhile canary doesn’t have a number to chirp throughout and sells herself strictly on talent merits in the romantic lead opposite Skelton. The manner in which she delivers should further her career.”

Alas, it was not to be, and when MGM failed to replace Garland with O’Brien in Annie Get Your Gun, mainly because she admitted she had a fear of horses, they did not renew her contract.

In 1955, she divorced Kirk Alyn (who died in 1999), and took a small role as a nurse in Francis In The Navy, starring Donald O’Connor and a talking mule. In 1957 she married electronics engineer Vern Evans, a marriage which produced a daughter. In 1968, after a divorce, she wed aviator and inventor Harry B White, a marriage which lasted until his death in 1996.

During the next two decades, O’Brien would appear in many comedy and variety series on television, and she also toured in a number of road companies. In 1983 she recorded a live performance album of her act at the Hollywood Masquer’s Club, which included many of the songs that made her famous.

Virginia O’Brien, actress and singer, born April 8 1921; died January 18 2001.

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

One of Hollywood’s most private and guarded leading men, Andy Garcia has created a few iconic characters while at the same time staying true to his acting roots and personal projects.

Garcia was born on April 12, 1956, in Havana, Cuba, to Amelie Menéndez, a teacher of English, and René García Núñez, an attorney and avocado farmer. Garcia’s family was relatively affluent. However, when he was two years old, Fidel Castro came to power, and the family fled to Miami Beach. Forced to work menial jobs for a while, the family started a fragrance company that was eventually worth more than a million dollars. He attended Natilus Junior High School and later at Miami Beach Senior High School. Andy was a popular student in school, a good basketball player and good-looking. He dreamed of playing professional baseball. In his senior year, though, he contracted mononucleosis and hepatitis, and unable to play sports, he turned his attention to acting.

He studied acting with Jay W. Jensen. Jensen was a South Florida legend, counting among his numerous students, Brett Ratner, Roy Firestone, Mickey Rourke, and Luther Campbell. Following his positive high school experiences in acting, he continued his drama studies at Florida International University.

Soon, he was headed out to Hollywood. His first break came as a gang member on the very first episode of the popular TV series Hill Street Blues (1981). His role as a cocaine kingpin in 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) put him on the radar of Brian De Palma, who was casting for his gangster classic The Untouchables (1987). At first, he envisioned Garcia asAl Capone‘s sadistic henchman Frank Nitti, but fearing typecasting as a gangster, Garcia campaigned for the role of “George Stone”, the Italian cop who gets accepted into Eliot Ness‘ famous band of lawmen. Garcia’s next notable role came in Black Rain (1989) by acclaimed director Ridley Scott, as the partner of police detective Michael Douglas. He then co-starred with Richard Gere in Internal Affairs (1990), directed by Mike Figgis. In 1989, Francis Ford Coppola was casting for the highly anticipated third installment of his “Godfather” films. The Godfather: Part III (1990) included one of the most sought-after roles in decades, the hot-headed son of “Sonny Corleone” and mob protégé of “Michael Corloene”, “Vincent Mancini”. A plum role for any young rising star, the role was campaigned for by a host of actors. Val Kilmer, Alec Baldwin, Vincent Spano, Charlie Sheen, and even Robert De Niro (who wanted the role changed to accommodate his age) were all beaten out by the up-and-coming Garcia. His performance was Oscar-nominated as Best Supporting Actor, and secured him international stardom and a place in cinematic history. Now a leading man, he starred in such films as Jennifer 8 (1992) and Hero (1992). He won raves for his role as the husband of Meg Ryan in When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) and gave another charismatic gangster turn in Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995). He then returned in Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), directed by Sidney Lumet, as well as portraying legendary mobster Lucky Luciano inHoodlum (1997). In perhaps his most mainstream role, he portrayed a cop in the action film Desperate Measures (1998). Garcia then starred in a few lower-profile projects that didn’t do much for his career, but things turned around in 2001, with the first of many projects being his role as a cold casino owner in Ocean’s Eleven (2001), directed bySteven Soderbergh. Seeing his removal from Cuba as involuntary, Garcia is proud of his heritage which influences his life and work. One such case is his portrayal of renowned Cuban trumpet player Arturo Sandoval in For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000). He is an extremely private man, and strong believer in old-fashioned chivalry. Married to his wife, Maria Victoria, since 1982, the couple has three daughters. One of the most talented leading men around, Garcia has had a unique career of staying true to his own ideals and thoughts on acting. While some would have used some of the momentum he has acquired at different points in his career to get rich off lightweight projects, Garcia has stayed true to stories and films that aspire to something more. But with a presence and style that never seem old, a respect from directors and film buffs, alike, Andy Garcia will be remembered for a long time in film history.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Brian Stewart and Chase Rosenberg

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Marjorie Reynolds

Bruce Yarnell

Ray Walston

Niall MacGinnis

Ruth Warrick

James McCaffrey

Warren Christie

Virginia O’Brien

Andy Garcia

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