Ronald Bergan’s obituary from “The Guardian” in 2001:
Of all the brassy, hip-swinging, sassy blondes of the 1940s, Maisie Ravier, as embodied by Ann Sothern, who has died aged 92, was the most beloved. At that period, when film fans wrote letters addressed to “Maisie, USA”, they went straight to Sothern’s dressing room, so popular and famous was her alter ego.
Ann Sothern, who was born Harriette Lake in North Dakota, was trained as a classical singer by her concert-soprano mother. But she found her temperament and voice were more suited for musical comedy. On Broadway, she soon rose from small parts to leads in Ziegfeld shows under her real name.
In 1933 she went to Hollywood, where she spent six years at various studios playing light-hearted heroines in mostly B pictures. However, she did have a chance to shine opposite Eddie Cantor in Kid Millions, and as Mimi, Maurice Chevalier’s showgirl mistress, in Folies Bergère. In Trade Winds (1938), for United Artists, Sothern, as detective Fredric March’s dumb blonde sidekick, stole the picture from the leading lady, Joan Bennett.
Her performance gained the attention of MGM, who considered Sothern perfect to play the title role in Maisie. The studio had bought the 1935 Wilson Collison novel Dark Dame as a vehicle for Jean Harlow. After Harlow’s premature death in 1937, it was shelved. When the MGM offer came, Sothern was shooting Hotel For Women at 20th Century-Fox, but when she accepted the offer from MGM, Darryl F Zanuck, head of Fox, removed her part out of pique.
Sothern’s comic vitality and warmth gave an added dimension to the character of the scatterbrained, accident-prone but resourceful blonde heroine. In each of the series, which included Congo Maisie, Maisie Was A Lady, Gold Rush Maisie and Swing Shift Maisie, she would start off alone, broke, irritable and vulgar, gradually making friends and money, and becoming charming and well-groomed, usually helping others out of fixes.
With the Maisie movies, MGM had another hit series to add to Dr Kildare, Andy Hardy and Tarzan, and Ann Sothern had little time for other roles. However, her charm, pleasant singing voice and good looks were well used in musicals such as Lady Be Good (1941) and Panama Hattie (1942). She displayed dramatic talent in the all-female Cry Havoc (1943), as a warm-hearted army nurse in Bataan.
Perhaps her best film was Joseph L Mankiewicz’s A Letter To Three Wives (1948), for 20th Century-Fox. In this stringent and witty social comedy, Sothern plays a radio soap writer, married to intellectual schoolteacher Kirk Douglas, who despises his wife’s work. She is particularly effective in the dinner party scene, when she has to try to please both her husband and her sponsors.
After playing Jane Powell’s actress mother in Nancy Goes To Rio (1950) and Anne Baxter’s wise-cracking roommate in Fritz Lang’s The Blue Gardenia (1953), she retired from films, retaining her popularity on TV in 104 episodes of Private Secretary, which she produced herself. She later sold the rights for more than $1m. Sothern also held the rights of the equally popular The Ann Sothern Show, in which she played the assistant manager of a swanky New York hotel. “I think Hollywood has been terrible to me,” she once commented. “Hollywood doesn’t respond to a strong woman, not at all. I was too independent. How dare a woman be competitive or produce her own shows?”
Recurring hepatitis kept her off the screen for some years in the 1950s. During a particularly bad time in her life, she befriended the film actor Richard Egan, under whose influence she converted to Catholicism. Previously, she had been married to two minor screen actors, both of whom she had appeared with in films: Roger Pryor and Robert Sterling (aka socialite William J Hart). Her daughter by the latter, Tisha Sterling, became an actress. (She had a leading role in Coogan’s Bluff with Clint Eastwood.)
In the 1960s, having put on a great deal of weight in the interim, Sothern returned to the big screen playing blowsy hookers in three films: Lady In A Cage (1963), tormenting rich widow Olivia de Havilland; in Sylvia (1965), with Carroll Baker; and Chubasco (1967), in which she ran a brothel visited by real-life lover Richard Egan. In The Best Man (1964), she was a sententious and dangerous political committee woman. “It did Adlai Stevenson great harm not having a wife and trying to be funny all at the same time,” she warns an unmarried presidential candidate – which could well have been a reference to Gore Vidal, who adapted his play for the screen.
Apart from some schlocky movies in the 70s and 80s, she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as the friend and confidante of elderly sisters Lillian Gish and Bette Davis in Lindsay Anderson’s The Whales Of August (1987). A few years ago, Ann Sothern remarked: “Sometimes I’ll watch an old movie on TV and once in a while one of mine will come on and I’ll watch it. And you know something? I’m always amazed at what a lousy actress I was. I guess in the old days we just got by on glamour.”
Those who remember Sothern with affection would violently disagree.
• Ann Sothern, film actress, born January 22 1909; died March 15 2001
The above obituary can also be accessed online here.
Ron Leibman was born on October 11, 1937 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Garden State (2004), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) and Norma Rae (1979). He has been married to Jessica Walter since June 26, 1983. He was previously married to Linda Lavin
Ron Leibman died in 2019.
TCM Overview:
This charismatic character lead has excelled in quirky, explosive, often Jewish, types and has been prominent on stage and TV since the 1960s. Ron Leibman was particularly applauded as the union organizer Ruben Warshawsky in Martin Ritt’s “Norma Rae” (1979), in his Emmy-winning role as “Kaz” (CBS, 1978-79) and as Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner’s two-part Broadway epic “Angels in America” (1993-94).
Raised in an upper middle class family on Manhattan’s Central Park West, Leibman broke into theater in 1959. After enjoying some success in “Dear Me, the Sky Is Falling” (1963) and “We Bombed in New Haven” (1968), he began making occasional feature films. The actor debuted as the gorilla-dressing brother in Carl Reiner’s “Where’s Poppa?” (1970). His other best-remembered parts included David Greenberg, the real-life street cop who formed half of the team nicknamed “The Super Cops” (1973) and as the smarmy antagonist in “Rhinestone” (1984). Leibman’s other films have proven generally disappointing. He starred in Arthur Hiller’s mistitled “Romantic Comedy” (1983) and was the commandant of a military school in the lame teen farce “Up the Academy” (1980), from which he attempted to have his name removed from the credits. The exceptions were the fine Australian-made horse racing saga, “Phar Lap” (1984) and Sidney Lumet’s “Night Falls on Manhattan” (1997), in which he played an ambitious district attorney.
In general, Leibman has found his talents unrewarded in Hollywood, but he has kept busy onstage in the modestly successful Neil Simon comedies, “I Ought to Be in Pictures” (1980) and “Rumors” (1989), in the latter alongside his second wife, Jessica Walter. He enjoyed a notable triumph onstage with his blistering, Tony-winning portrait of Joseph McCarthy’s venomous right-hand man Roy Cohn in “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” and “Angels in America: Perestroika.” Leibman also garnered controversy for his portrayal of Shylock in a 1994 Off-Broadway production of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”
Leibman’s larger-than-life approach to roles often seemed ill-suited to the small screen as well. Although he has begun working in TV in the early 60s, he has not been able to find a successful series berth. While he earned praise and an Emmy for “Kaz,” a show which he also created, it did not pull in the ratings. Neither did “Pacific Station” (NBC, 1991), a short-lived detective series. While Leibman brought class and verve to the recurring role of ruthless magazine publisher Allen Rush on the CBS sudser “Central Park West/CPW” (1995-96) and despite a heavy promotional effort, that series was also quickly canceled. He has found some success in the occasional role as the uptight father of Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) on the hit NBC sitcom “Friends.”
Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian” in 2010:
Perhaps the most famous line spoken on screen by the actor Patricia Neal, who has died of lung cancer aged 84, was “Klaatu barada nikto!” in Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). These incomprehensible words, uttered to a robot which carries her into a spaceship, save the world from destruction. Neal won her Oscar for a more down-to-earth performance, as the cynical, world-weary housekeeper Alma Brown in Martin Ritt’s contemporary western, Hud (1963). “It was a tough part to cast,” Ritt remarked. “This woman had to be believable as a housekeeper and still be sexy. It called for a special combination of warmth and toughness, while still being very feminine. Pat Neal was it.”
Perhaps the most telling indication of Neal’s gifts was the fact that, although the role was quite a brief one, the Academy included her in the category of best actress, rather than best supporting actress. One memorable moment in the film was improvised: in response to Paul Newman‘s kiss, Neal swats a fly, which she happened to notice on the set.
Neal had a sexy, husky southern nasal drawl. She was born Patsy Lou Neal in Kentucky, attended Knoxville high school in Tennessee and studied drama at Northwestern University in Illinois. She then went to New York, worked as a model and, in 1945, got a job understudying Vivian Vance in John Van Druten’s The Voice of the Turtle on Broadway, taking over for one night. The following year, aged 20, Neal triumphed as Regina, the spoiled-brat daughter in Lillian Hellman’s family saga Another Part of the Forest, directed by the author. One critic hailed her “a young Tallulah Bankhead” and she won a Tony for best actress.
With her dark hair dyed bright blonde, Neal began her film career inauspiciously with John Loves Mary (1949), in which she played a senator’s daughter engaged to ex-GI Ronald Reagan. In the same year, with a Warner Bros contract, her special qualities were better used in King Vidor’s baroque film of the Ayn Rand bestseller The Fountainhead. As the architecture critic Dominique Francon, she first appears at the edge of a quarry watching, in an erotic manner, a bare-chested Gary Cooper phallically using a pneumatic drill. The sexual chemistry in the film reflected Neal and the married Cooper’s real-life romantic entanglement.
Neal played a nurse in the British-made The Hasty Heart (1949), set in war-torn Burma. She consolidated her friendship with Reagan, again her co-star, confiding in him about her involvement with Cooper. In Bright Leaf (1950), she was a ruthless aristocratic southern girl vying with tart-with-a-heart Lauren Bacall for tobacco tycoon Cooper.
Neal was sparky opposite John Garfield in The Breaking Point (1950), which was truer to Ernest Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not than Howard Hawks’s earlier adaptation had been. A few less interesting pictures followed, excepting The Day the Earth Stood Still at Fox, before her three-year affair with Cooper ended. Neal had become pregnant by Cooper and had an abortion, after which she suffered a nervous breakdown. She returned to Broadway in 1952 in a revival of Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, making an impression as a schoolteacher accused of lesbianism. During rehearsals, Neal met Roald Dahl at a party given by Hellman. They married in 1953 and settled in England, where they would bring up five children.
In 1955, Neal was back on Broadway as the mother of a difficult teenage girl in A Roomful of Roses. In March 1956, she took over from Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie in Tennessee Williams’s Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. The play was directed by Elia Kazan, who cast Neal in his next film, A Face in the Crowd (1957). Revealing vulnerability beneath a hard surface, she was brilliant as the executive of a small southern TV station who discovers a folksy country singer, Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith), and turns him into a national institution. Although in love with the singer, she realises she has created a monster and destroys him.
In 1958, Neal appeared with great success in Williams’s one-act play Suddenly, Last Summer at the Arts theatre in London. She was heartbroken to lose out to Elizabeth Taylor when a film of the play was made. In 1959 Neal returned to Broadway to play Helen Keller’s mother in The Miracle Worker. The following year her son, Theo, was injured in a road accident and had to undergo several brain operations. In London in 1961, with her hair dyed red, she appeared in Breakfast at Tiffany’s as a rich society matron known only as “2-E”, a rival of the younger Audrey Hepburn for the affections of George Peppard. In 1962 she suffered another personal tragedy when her seven-year-old daughter Olivia died of measles.
Following Hud, she filmed three days of John Ford’s Seven Women (1966), before having a stroke. She was replaced in the film by Anne Bancroft. After suffering further strokes, Neal became partially paralysed and incapable of articulate speech, but she learned to walk and talk again. She worked with brain-damaged children and was awarded the American Heart Association’s heart of the year award by President Lyndon Johnson. Several years later she founded the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Centre in Knoxville for stroke, spinal cord and brain injury patients.
Her remarkable recovery allowed her to return to the cinema. As the embittered wife in The Subject Was Roses (1968), she was again nominated for an Oscar. Among her later roles were a speech therapist in Baxter! (1973); the wife of scientist James Mason, on the run from Nazis in The Passage (1979); the hero’s mother in an adaptation of All Quiet On the Western Front (1979); and Heidi’s grandmother in a TV series (1993) based on Johanna Spyri’s character. She also had a crucial role in Cookie’s Fortune (1999), directed by Robert Altman.
She and Dahl divorced after his affair with Felicity Crosland, whom he married in 1983. Neal returned to live in the US. Her life was recounted in a 1981 TV film starring Glenda Jackson, with Dirk Bogarde as Dahl. In her autobiography, As I Am (1988), Neal, who had found comfort in Catholicism, wrote: “A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.” She is survived by her children Tessa, Ophelia, Theo and Lucy; her brother Pete and sister Margaret; and 10 grandchildren and step-grandchildren.
• Patricia (Patsy Lou) Neal, actor, born 20 January 1926; died 8 August 2010
The above obituary can also be accessed on “The Guardian” on line here.
Bette Midler built a successful stage, screen and recording career on the basis of her self-styled “Divine Miss M” character – a sassy, hip-wagging classic “broad” archetype. She was quick with the comebacks, took no guff and had a tendency to burst into tunes from the Great American Songbook. Her initial stage fame and string of nostalgia-tinged hit albums in the 1970s eventually led to big screen success, with dramas like the pseudo Janis Joplin biopic “The Rose” (1980) and three-hankie chick flick “Beaches” (1990). She also lent appropriately outrageous variations of Miss M to comedies including “Ruthless People” (1986), “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (1986) and “The First Wives Club” (1996). In an era where stage, screen and recording crossover success was rare, only Liza Minnelli rivaled Midler when it came to endless concert tour schedules and triumph in all genres. More than 30 years into her career, the entertainer was still scoring hits with such albums as 1998’s Bathhouse Betty and the televised special of her acclaimed Caesar’s Palace act “Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On” (HBO, 2010). As a film star, live performer and winner of Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe awards, Midler was an entertainment icon of the highest order.
The Divine Miss M was born on Dec. 1, 1945 to a seamstress mother and housepainter father from Paterson, NJ. The couple had moved to Hawaii just prior to Midler’s birth, where her father landed a job at a Navy yard. The transplanted Jewish East Coasters were a bit of an oddity in the rural South Pacific sugar cane fields, but Midler developed a quick wit to combat her outsider status, winding up as a well-liked class clown and notorious performer. Along with two other girls, she formed a vocal trio that played school events and eventually began to book gigs entertaining at adult venues. As soon as the senior class president and valedictorian accepted her diploma in 1963, she headed right into the entertainment field, putting in a year in the Drama Department at the University of Hawaii before landing a small role in the film adaptation of James Michener’s “Hawaii” (1966).
Midler spent her first big paycheck on a move to New York City, where, after a short stint as a go-go dancer, she went to an open call for a national tour of “Fiddler on the Roof” and ended up in the Broadway cast, taking over the part of Tzeitel in February 1967 and staying with the role for three years. After a run as The Acid Queen in a Seattle Opera Association production of “Tommy,” Midler returned to New York, determined to focus on her singing career. After rave club reviews which took note of her powerful pipes, she was booked on all the top variety TV shows of the day. She took a 16-week engagement that electrified the towel-clad gay clientele of the Continental Baths, where Barry Manilow backed her on piano. It was at that time that the larger-than-life persona of ‘The Divine Miss M’ – and along with it, a loyal gay following – was born.
Atlantic Records signed Midler to a record deal and released her debut album, The Divine Miss M, in 1972. The bawdy, red-haired performer with the wide, toothy smile built her career on being outrageous, but also balanced the camp by interspersing a few tears for the human spirit amidst the sequins and fringes. Musically, her early work “nailed the nostalgia thing” with Andrews Sisters takeoffs – i.e. “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” – and 1960s girl group numbers, as well as including blues and show tunes in her broad musical spectrum. The album went gold and won her the Grammy for Best New Artist. Midler developed a larger version of her earlier cabaret revue and performed “Clams on the Halfshell” at the Palace Theater, earning a Special Tony Award in 1974. On a complete roll, she spent the next three years on national and international concert tours, wowing the gays and the straights who poured in to worship Ms. Divine.
Unfortunately, sales dropped off sharply for her third LP, Songs for the New Depression (1976), but she retained a loyal concert following and picked up her first Emmy as the star of “Bette Midler: Ol’ Red Hair Is Back” (NBC, 1977). She made her first impact as a film actress in Mark Rydell’s “The Rose” (1978), earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a high-strung, burned-out singer loosely based on Janis Joplin. The soundtrack LP went platinum in 1980, aided by the Top Ten title song which became a bona fide smash single. A Midler concert film and soundtrack entitled “Divine Madness” came out later that year, as did her first book, A View from a Broad, a humorous memoir of her first world tour. Midler was at the top of her game, but bad advice from her agent led her to take a screen role in the aptly named comedy “Jinxed!” (1982). She suffered greatly, warring with co-star Ken Wahl and director Don Siegel and ultimately serving as scapegoat when the picture flopped. The film’s failure followed her firing of her back-up singers the Harlettes, who successfully sued and later won a $2 million judgment. The twin debacles helped bring on a nervous breakdown, which kept her off the screen for four years, though she remained busy with concert work and TV specials.
Midler bounced back with a formidable focus on big screen comedies throughout the 1980s. Signed by Disney in 1986, she proved herself a deft, aggressive comedienne in a skein of profitable films, beginning with the bright satire “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (1986) and continuing through the enjoyable if forgettable “Outrageous Fortune” (1987) and “Big Business” (1988), in which she and Lily Tomlin each played identical twins. Probably the best of her movies during this period was the clever black comedy “Ruthless People” (1986), which hilariously paired her with Danny DeVito as a thoroughly despicable couple. She formed her own production company, All Girl Productions, and made her first foray into producing with the moderately successful “Beaches” (1988), co-starring alongside Barbara Hershey as a charismatic New York cabaret performer in a tale of the lifelong bond between girlfriends. Bette also performed the film’s theme, “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” which became her first No. 1 hit, won a Grammy, and along with “The Rose,” became one of her two definitive numbers.
The studio, sensing it was on to something, cast her in two old-fashioned follow-up tearjerkers, but Jeffery Katzenberg’s wrong-headed passion for “Stella” (1990) earned Premiere magazine’s kiss of death: “A must to avoid.” She fared somewhat better in Rydell’s “For the Boys” (1992) as a World War II USO performer, a seemingly natural fit for Midler, based on her earlier success with the Andrews Sisters’ material. The picture revealed a flair for drama not really tapped since “The Rose” and earned Midler a second Best Actress Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win, but audiences avoided the big-budget musical like the plague. She next teamed with Woody Allen to portray a married couple for Paul Mazursky’s “Scenes from a Mall” (1991), but it did not come close to Midler’s earlier comedic success. Her outlandish appearance as a long-deceased witch in Disney’s “Hocus Pocus” (1993), suggesting a return to the zany fare that made Midler a bankable movie star seven years earlier, could not save the ghoulish, effects-laden bomb that was deemed a discredit to Disney “family entertainment” by film critic Leonard Maltin.
The year 1993 marked Midler’s overdue return to live concert performances with “Experience the Divine,” which was capped by a record-breaking 30-night stand at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. That same year, she gave a tour-de-force performance as Mama Rose in a TV remake of the musical classic “Gypsy” (CBS), which earned her a second Golden Globe Award. Midler returned to big screen comedy full-force when teaming with Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn in Hugh Wilson’s “The First Wives’ Club” (1996), a film about women whose husbands have left them for younger beauties which – thanks to the collective star power of the threesome – became one of the surprise hits of the season. She also starred with Dennis Farina in “That Old Feeling” (1997), about a divorced couple whose romantic yearnings are rekindled at their daughter’s wedding, as well as returned to the mic to earn an Emmy for “Bette Midler – Diva Las Vegas” (HBO, 1997). She garnered another Emmy nomination for her guest turn as a secretary in the final episode of the long-running CBS series “Murphy Brown” (CBS, 1988-1998) in 1998, before kicking off the international “Divine Miss Millennium” tour the following year, welcoming in 2000 with a New Year’s Eve performance at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
After a pair of box office failures with the Jacqueline Susann biopic “Isn’t She Great?” (2000) and the pallid comedy “Drowning Mona” (2000), Midler agreed to headline a sitcom in an effort to revive her acting career. In “Bette” (CBS, 2000-01), she played a variation of herself – a showbiz veteran juggling the demands of career, marriage and motherhood. Despite initially positive reviews, ratings were so-so and negative gossip about behind-the-scenes problems plagued the series’ image. After dabbling in the executive producer role when she helped bring “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” (2002) to the big screen, Midler reunited with former collaborator Barry Manilow to record Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook for Columbia Records. The album was a bit of a surprise hit and went gold, in addition to earning the pair a Grammy nod.
Midler spent the following year-plus back on the road with her “Kiss My Brass” concert tour and made a return to theaters in 2004 with her role as Bobbie Markowitz, a Jewish writer and recovering alcoholic in the remake of the cult classic “The Stepford Wives.” Midler and Manilow recreated their previous album success with 2005’s Bette Midler Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook and Midler returned to the studio in 2006 to record Cool Yule, a Grammy-nominated album of pop holiday classics. Helen Hunt lured Midler back to the big screen to star as her biological mother in Hunt’s pet project, the comedic drama “Then She Found Me” (2008). That same year, the 62-year-old powerhouse began a two-year run of “Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On” at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
Midler appeared in theaters for a second time that year in an updating of George Cukor’s 1950s melodrama “The Women” (2008) co-starring with Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and Eva Mendes. Unfortunately, despite the star power of its all-female cast, the reinvention of “The Women” did little to improve upon the original and quickly disappeared from screens. Midler took part in a far more successful, if artistically less ambitious project two years later when she voiced the eponymous feline super villain in the family action-comedy “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” (2010). Recognized for doing what she did best, “Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On” (HBO, 2010) picked up an Emmy nomination the following year and the 2010 album Memories of You found Midler waxing nostalgic with a compilation of her lesser known standards. Beginning in 2011, Midler uncharacteristically stayed behinds the scenes as one of the producers on the Broadways production of the musical “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert” and went on to win the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
By Susan Clarke
The above TCM overview can also be accessed on line here.
A cultured and debonair star with a mellifluous voice, actor Vincent Price developed a reputation portraying campy villains in a number of horror films. Though he began his career on the British stage, Price made his name as a supporting character player in noirs like “Laura” (1944), “The Long Night” (1947) and “The Bribe” (1949) before becoming inextricably tied to horror, thanks to his turn as the vengeance seeking wax sculptor in the classic “House of Wax” (1953). From there, he solidified his standing with “The Mad Magician” (1954) before appearing in mainstream studio fare like “While the City Sleeps” (1956) and “The Ten Commandments” (1956). After earning cult status with “The Fly” (1958) and its sequel “Return of the Fly” (1959), Price began a collaboration with low-budget producer Roger Corman on a series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, including “House of Usher” (1960), “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1961), and “The Raven” (1963). He hit a career low point with a pair of overly-campy James Bond spoofs, while revealing his role as the arch villain Egghead on “Batman” (ABC, 1966-68). Price wound down his career in the next decades using his distinctive voice in a number of projects, most notably Tim Burton’s stop-motion short “Vincent” (1982) and Michael Jackson’s seminal music video, “Thriller” (1983). Price made his final film appearance in Burton’s fantastical “Edward Scissorhands” (1990), before succumbing to lung cancer in 1993 and leaving behind a legacy forever entwined with the horror genre.
Born on May 27, 1911 in St. Louis, MO, Price was raised in a wealthy home by his father, Vincent, the president of a candy manufacturing company, and his mother, Marguerite. Price received a top-notch education, attending the private St. Louis Country Day School before earning bachelor degrees in history and language from Yale University. While attending the Ivy League school, he began to dabble in performing, particularly in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Price moved on to the University of London, where he studied history and studied art at the Courtald Institute. During his time in the British Isles, Price began to perform on stage professionally and made his stage debut in a production of “Chicago” at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. In 1935, he delivered a sterling performance as the Prince Regent in the Gate Theatre’s production of “Victoria Regina,” which made its way across the Atlantic for a triumphant performance on Broadway. Price’s success on stage soon led to a film career, starting with his debut in “Service De Luxe” (1938) and graduating to more prominent parts such as Raleigh in the costume drama “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” (1939).
Price soon moved into playing the villain in several films and turned in strong performances in straight dramas, notably in Otto Preminger’s “Laura” (1944), opposite Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, and Anatole Litvak’s “The Long Night” (1947). Price continued to play the heavy in noirs like “The Web” (1947), “Rogue’s Regiment” (1948) and “The Bribe” (1949), before landing the lead role of a conman and expert forger in “The Baron of Arizona” (1950). Following supporting roles in “His Kind of Woman” (1951) and “The Las Vegas Story” (1952), Price became almost exclusively associated with the horror genre, thanks to his role as the revenge-driven sculptor in the 3-D classic of the macabre, “House of Wax” (1953), a film with which he was indelibly entwined for the rest of his career, and that led to starring roles in other horror pictures like “The Mad Magician” (1954). He next supported Victor Mature and Piper Laurie in the noir thriller “Dangerous Mission” (1954), and had a cameo as the real Casanova in the Bob Hope comedy “Casanova’s Big Night” (1954). After turns in Howard Hughes’ troubled production “Son of Sinbad” (1955) and Fritz Lang’s “While the City Sleeps” (1956), his theatrical flair was also put to good use as the villainous Baka in Cecil B. DeMille’s epic remake of his “The Ten Commandments” (1956), starring Charlton Heston and Yule Brynner.
While amassing a number of supporting roles in major pictures, Price continued to be a star in lower budget horror, and further cemented his stature in that genre as the scientist-turned-fly’s brother in the cult favorite “The Fly” (1958) and the sequel “Return of the Fly” (1959). He also appeared as an eccentric millionaire in the original version of “House on Haunted Hill” (1959), which was remade 40 years later. In the early 1960s, Price began appearing in movies produced by American International Pictures, a busy studio that specialized in churning out cheapie teen genre fare for drive-ins. He often worked with famed low-budget director Roger Corman, for whom he starred in a series of stylish gothic chillers loosely based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, including “House of Usher” (1960), “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1961), “The Raven” (1963), and “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964); AIP sometimes teamed Price with aging Hollywood icons Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone. He went on to appear in “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine” (1965), an obvious spoof of the James Bond classic “Goldfinger” (1964), which spawned the dreadful sequel “Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs” (1966).
Price was also a fine arts collector, chef and lecturer of some note. He published books on art and cuisine, ranging fromDrawings of Delacroix (1962) to The Come Into the Kitchen Cook Book, (1969), co-authored with second wife Mary. From 1966-68, Price gleefully spoofed his onscreen image playing the villain Egghead on the camp series “Batman” (ABC, 1966-68), a role that he relished. Meanwhile, he broadened his horizons and made his Broadway musical debut in “Darling of the Day” (1968), before touring the United States and later the world in “Diversions and Delights,” his one-man play about Oscar Wilde. He continued to appear onscreen, of course, delivering classically campy turns in “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” (1971) and its sequel, “Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). Price counted “Theatre of Blood” (1973) among his favorite credits, in which he played Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearean ham who exacts bloody vengeance on his critics by dispatching them in recreations of the Bard’s famous death scenes. He next starred in the British-made horror film “Madhouse” (1974) and stayed across the pond for the strange comedy “Percy’s Progress” (1974), about a man who undergoes the world’s first penis transplant.
Price next starred opposite Sam Waterston and Donald Pleasence in the thriller “Journey into Fear” (1975) and joined the all-star cast of the spoof “Scavenger Hunt” (1979), which featured an ensemble cast that included Tony Randall, Cloris Leachman, Roddy McDowall, James Coco and Ruth Gordon. In the late-1970s, Price found the horror movies were not as popular as they once were and began shifting toward more voiceover work, having already been noted for his rarified diction tinged with a hint of malice. He also found his career to be winding down just a bit, and thus made fewer appearances as he had in the past. In 1981, he began serving an eight-year stint as the urbane, gently sinister host of the PBS series “Mystery!” (1980-88), which showcased adaptations of famed horror stories. At the same time, he was contacted for his services by two self-avowed Vincent Price fans. First, Price was asked to narrate up-and-coming filmmaker Tim Burton’s stop-motion short, “Vincent” (1982), as well as supplied the spoken word narration for Michael Jackson’s landmark song and video “Thriller” (1983). He next appeared onscreen opposite old friend Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the horror spoof “House of the Long Shadows” (1983), and followed that with a turn in the over-the-top “Bloodbath at the House of Death” (1984).
Price provided the voice for the diabolical Professor Ratigan, the Dr. Moriarty-like villain of the Disney animated feature, “The Great Mouse Detective” (1986). His last major role in a feature was Mr. Maranov, the transplanted Russian nobleman who charms Bette Davis and Lillian Gish in Lindsay Anderson’s “The Whales of August” (1987). Price was a major influence on filmmaker Tim Burton, who idolized his screen persona as a child and led to the morbid adoration that was the subject of “Vincent.” Burton later cast him as the kindly old inventor who creates the titular “Edward Scissorhands” (1990), a role that was cut down in size because of Price’s worsening emphysema brought about by a lifetime of smoking cigarettes. The brief, but charming appearance proved to be Price’s last appearance on film. He later made an appearance on the small screen in the television movie “The Heart of Justice” (TNT, 1993), the very last time he was on any screen. Price eventually succumbed to lung cancer on Oct. 25, 1993. He was 82 years old.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed on line here.
John Loder, an actor whose tenure of more than 30 years in British and American movies was credited largely to his good looks and his imposing physique, has died in England. He was 90 years old and had homes in London and Buenos Aires.
Mr. Loder, who died in late December, was born John Muir Lowe, in York, England. He was educated at Eton and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, and at Eton College. In World War I, he served with the 15th Hussars in North Africa, France and Gallipoli, Turkey. He was taken prisoner in early 1918. His 1977 autobiography was titled ”Hollywood Hussar.” Started as an Extra
His first film appearance was as an extra in a 1926 German feature, ”Madame Wants No Children,” which starred Marlene Dietrich.
Mr. Loder left Europe for Hollywood and had roles in Paramount’s first talking picture, ”The Doctor’s Secret,” in 1929. He was also in Rin-Tin-Tin’s first sound picture, in 1930.
Among the scores of British and American films he performed in were the 1937 British version of ”King Solomon’s Mines,” with Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Paul Robeson, Roland Young and Anna Lee, Alfred Hitchcock’s ”Sabotage” (1936), ”Eagle Squadron” (1942), ”Passage to Marseilles” (1944) and ”Lorna Doone” (1935), considered his best British movie. His last films included ”Gideon’s Day” (1958), ”Esquiu” (1965) and ”The Firechasers” (1970). Although he had a variety of roles, his specialty seemed to be the jilted husband. Noted Portrayals
Critics considered his best portrayals to be Ianto, the eldest son in ”How Green Was My Valley” (1941), and Elliott Livingston, opposite Bette Davis, in ”Now, Voyager” (1942).
Another significant Loder film was ”Dishonored Lady” (1947), in which he appeared with Hedy Lamarr, who became his third wife in 1943 and from whom he was divorced when they made the movie together. They had a son and daughter.
His other wives were Sophie Kabel, with whom he had a son; Micheline Cheirel, with whom he had a daughter; Evelyn Carolyn Auffmordt, and Alba Julia Lagomarsino, whom he married in 1958
Joan CrawfordJoan Crawford.
Blackglama: What Becomes a Legend Most?
New York Times obituary in 1977:
Joan Crawford, who rose from waitress and chorus girl to become one of the great movie stars, died yesterday of a heart attack in her apartment at 158 Cast. 68th Street. She gave her age as 69, but some reference works list her as two to four years older.
Miss Crawford had been a director of the Pepsi‐Cola Company since the death of her fourth husband, Alfred N. Steele, the board chairman of the company, in 1959, but she had not been actively involved in the business in recent months.
A spokesman for Pepsi‐Cola said Miss Crawford had no history of cardiac trouble and had appeared to be in good health except for recent. complaints of hack pains.
Miss Crawford was a quintessential superstar—an epitome of timeless glamour who personified for decades the dreams and disappointments of millions of American women.
With a wind‐blown bob, mocking eyes and swirling short. skirt, she spun to stardom in 1928, frenziedly dancing the Charleston atop a table in the silent melodram,a Our Dancing Daughters.”
As a frivolous flapper she quickly made a series of spin‐offs, including “Our Modern Maidens,” “Laughing Sinners” and This Modern Age.” Endowed with a low voice, she easily made the transition to sound pictures and went on to become one of the more‐endurable movie queens.
Her career, a chorine‐to‐grande dame rise, with some setbacks, was due largely to determination, shrewd timing, flexibility, hard work and discipline.
Self‐educated and intensely professional, Miss Crawford studied and trained assiduously to learn her art. She made the most of her large blue eyes, wide mouth, broad shoulders and slim figure and eventually became an Oscar‐winning dramatic actress.
From Youth to Aged
In more than 80 movies, she adapted easily to changing times and tastes. When audiences began to tire of one image, she toiled to produce a new one. She made the changes with pace‐setting makeup, coiffures, costumes—and craftsmanship.
Exhibitors voted her one of the 10 top money‐making stars from 1932 through 1936, and in the late 1930’s she was one of the highest‐paid actresses. With a finely structured, photogenic face and highstyle gowns usually designed by Adrian, she idealized what many women wished to be.
In 1945, when her career seemed to be foundering, she rebounded as a doting mother and ambitious waitress who rises to wealthy restauranteur in “Mildred Pierce,” a role that won her an Academy Award as best actress.
‘A Script Stealer’
Despite the Cinderella‐type roles in many of her early movies, which many reviewers came to term “the Crawford formula,” she fought tenaciously for varied and challenging parts, just as she later fought to remain a great star, with what one writer called “the diligence of a ditchdigger.”
In her autobiography, “A Portrait of Joan,” written with Jane Kesner Ardmore and published in 1962 by Doubleday & Company Inc., she acknowledged that “I was always a script stealer,” which got her into “Our Dancing Daughters.” She boldly cajoled producers, directors and writers to gain good roles.
When Norma Shearer refused to play a mother in the 1940 drama “Susan and God,” Miss Crawford was offered the role. She responded, “I’d play Wally Beery’s grandmother if it’s a good part!”
Her major portrayals included a wanton stenographer in the star‐studded adaptation of Vicki Baum’s “Grand Hotel”; Sadie Thompson, W. Somerset Maugham’s vulgar but vulnerable prostitute, in “Rain”; Crystal, a husband‐stealing siren in Clare Soothe Luce’s satire “The Women”; scarred blackmailer in “A Woman’s Face”; a schizophrenic in “Possessed,” and the target of a homicidal husband in “Sudden Fear.”
Quarrels Publicized
With dedication and skill, she also made commercial successes of what many reviewers scored as inferior vehicles with implausible plots and synthetic dialogue. In 1962 she began a new career in the horror genre, with “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” co‐starring Bette Davis.
In later years, the indomitable Miss Crawford was involved in a number of publicized quarrels because of what some colleagues called her imperiousness, and her admitted bluntness toward actors that she regarded as incompetent, undisciplined or unprofessional.
She reveled in being a star and exhaustively cultivated her fan clubs and fans, predominantly women, with gifts and personally written notes—key efforts in maintaining their steadfast loyalty. She expressed delight in having “a hundred people clutching at my coat, clamoring for autographs.”
Life Imitated art in the late 1950’s when, between movies, she embarked on a career as a businesswoman—a representative‐in‐glamour for the Pepsi‐Cola Company.
Elected to Board
In 1955 she married Alfred N. Steele, the company’s board chairman and chief executive officer. Her previous marriages to three actors—Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Franchot Tone and Phillip Terry—had ended in divorce.
Mr. Steele logged more than 100.000 miles a year in revitalizing the soft‐drink company’s worldwide activities. She started traveling with him, flying to gala openings of new bottling plants and conventions and serving as hostess of parties on their trips, as well as in their spacious East Side Manhattan penthouse.
In 1959, two days after her husband died of a heart attack, she was elected the first woman director of the company’s board.
She made scores of national tours, promoting Pepsi‐Cola and her films. Accompanying her were large entourages and at least 15 trunks and suitcases for a wardrobe of up to 10 costume changes
In New York, Miss Crawford became a leading benefactor, fund ‐ raiser and honorary official for dozens of philanthropies, explaining to an interviewer in 1971, “I’ve been on the receiving end of so much good that I feel I have to give something back.”
Among her many honors were election as a fellow of Brandeis University and designation in 1965 as the first Woman of the Year by the United Service Organizations of New York for her qualities as “an actress, an executive, humanitarian.”
The actress had long wanted to have children, but, she wrote, she was plagued by miscarriages. She adopted four children: Christina, who also became an actress; Christopher, and Cynthia and Cathy, who were twins.
Of French and Irish descent, Miss Crawford was born Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio. She listed her birth date as March 23, 1908, but many reference works put it at two to four years earlier. Her parents, Thomas and Anna Johnson LeSueur, separated before her birth, and her mother soon married Henry Cassin, owner of a vaudeville theater in Lawton, Okla. She was known for years as Billie Cassin.
Quit Stephens College
Her youth was harsh. Her family, including her elder brother, Hal LeSueur, moved to Kansas City, Mo., about 1916. Her mother and stepfather soon separated and, from the age of 9, she had to work, first in a laundry, helping her mother, and then in two private schools, St. Agnes Academy and the Rockingham School, where she was the only working student, cooking, washing dishes, waiting on tables and making beds for 30 other youngsters. She did not object to working, she recalled, but to being treated as a slave.
Work prevented her from attending classes. The wife of Rockingham’s headmaster often punished her, with broomhandle floggings, she wrote, and falsified her records, which enabled her to enter Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., as a working student. After about three months, aware that she was not academically prepared, she withdrew.
Dancing was her main outlet, and in her early teens she won a Charleston contest in a Kansas City cafe, She worked as a salesgirl, pinching pennies for dancing lessons.
M.‐G.‐M. Screen Test
Vowing “to be the best dancer in the world,” she went to Chicago, where she danced and sang in a cafe, and then to Detroit, where J. J. Shubert, the producer, picked her from a nightclub chorus line to dance on Broadway in his 1924 revue “Innocent Eyes.”
Spotted by Harry Rapf, a talent scout for Metro‐Goldwyn‐Mayer, she was offered a screen test. Passing it, she signed a six‐month contract for $75 a week and, on Jan, 1, 1925, set out for Hollywood.
The freckle‐faced, 5‐foot‐4½‐inch‐tall dancer was a little plump, but soon slimmed down by daily jogging, decades before it was voguish.
She plunged into her movie apprenticeship as a chorus girl in “Pretty Ladies,” a Zasu Pitts comedy; an ingdnue in “Old Clothes” with Jackie Coogan, and a featured dancing role in “Sally, Irene and Mary.” she was voted a Wampas “baby star,” won a new contract and, because Lucille LeSueur was regarded as awkward to pronounce, was given the name Joan Crawford, the winning entry in a movie‐magazine contest.
She gained experience and billing playing opposite such actors as Lon Chaney, William Haines and John Gilbert, and rocketed to fame in “Our Dancing Daughters.” She passed the talking and singing test in 1929, in “Untamed,” co‐starring Robert Montgomery, and made eight movies over the years with Clark Gable, most of their box‐office hits. They included “Dancing Lady,” gliding with Fred Astaire in his movie debut, and “Strange Cargo.”
At M.‐G.‐M, Miss Crawford occasionally broke away from stereotyped casting and won acclaim for distinctive performances. But the best roles went to Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer, the wife of Irving G. Thalberg, the studio’s executive production manager. After the two actresses retired, Greer Garson got the plums. Frustrated by formula films, which she termed “undiluted hokum,” Miss Crawford asked Metro to drop her contract in 1942, and she left the studio after 17 years.
She joined Warner Brothers, but rejected scripts for more than two years until her triumphal return in “Mildred Pierce,” adapted from a mordant novel by James M. Cain.
Image Is Ageless
In this and many other movies, she showed. as Richard Schickel wrote in “The Stars,” published in 1962, a mastery “of what the trade knows as the ‘woman’s picture’,” in which “she suffers incredible agonies of the spirit in her attempts to achieve love and or success. The women suffer along with Miss Crawford, but are reassured by what they know of her own career, which clearly states that a woman can triumph in a man’s world.”
In her later career she projected a kind of ageless image. Her roles included the emotionally confused “Daisy Kenyon,” a carnival girl and convict in “Flamingo Road,” a shrew in “Harriet Craig,” a hoofer in “Torch Song,” a western ranchgang leader in “Johnny Guitar,” a lonely spinster who marries a psychotic youth in “Autumn Leaves” and many other vehicles of ordeal and anguish.
After “…Baby Jane,” Miss Crawford, tenaciously holding on to stardom, made a number of thrillers, some of them grisly, and appeared occasionally in television dramas and episodes. She long talked of going on the stage, but uncharacteristically said later that she lacked “the guts” to appear before a large live audience.
Imposed Discipline
In Hollywood she had determinedly improved herself, developing culture and polish. Her first marriage, to Douglas Fairbanks Jr., introduced her to the exotic social world of Pickfair, the home of Douglas Sr. and Mary Pickford. Franchot Tone helped her study classical drama and innovative acting techniques. Miss Crawford later described her marriages to them and to Phillip Terry as “dollhouse” unions. But her marriage to Mr. Steele, she said, gave her greater emotional stability than she had ever known.
Some interviewers wrote that she imposed her perfectionism on her four adopted children, being overly strict with them. To these assertions, she replied: “I’ve tried to provide my children with what I didn’t have: constructive discipline, a sense of security, a sense of sharing,” “Sloppiness has never been tolerated in our home, nor has rudeness,” and “They’re going into a world that isn’t easy, a world where unless you are selfsufficient and strong, you can be destroyed.”
Some years ago, leaving Manhattan’s “21” Club, she was greeted by a group of construction workers, one shouting, “Hey, Joanie!” She cordially shook hands with several of them. One surveyed her carefully and remarked: “They don’t make them like you anymore, baby.”
Miss Crawford is survived by her four children: Mrs. Cathy Lalonde, Mrs. Cynthia Jordan Crawford, Christina Crawford, and Christopher, and four grandchildren
IMDB entry:
Lucille LeSueur’s parents separated before she was born. By age 16 she had three different stepfathers, one of whom (a vaudeville theater manager) had given her the name Billie Cassin. By 1915 she, her brother Hal and their mother lived in Kansas City, and Billie worked in a laundry with her mother and also as a menial to pay school tuition. Winning an amateur dance contest in 1923 led to chorus work in Chicago, Detroit and New York. On New Year’s Day of 1925 she left for Hollywood. Before her second picture, a Photoplay contest led to the name Joan Crawford. With Our Dancing Daughters (1928) she became a star. She had a string of successes playing socialites or rags-to-riches shop girls, most notably as Crystal Allen in The Women (1939). She stayed with MGM for 18 years, signing with Warners in 1943. Mildred Pierce (1945) was a defining role and won her an Oscar.
After more than 70 films, she married Alfred Steele, chairman of the board of the Pepsi-Cola Co., a company with which she remained as a board member and spokesman after her husband’s fatal heart attack in 1959. In 1972 when the company’s executives saw no further use for her, they pushed her out. After that, she referred to the CEO as “Fang”.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) brought new careers to both Crawford andBette Davis in 1962–although the two despised each other–but the ensuing roles were neither numerous nor flattering. Horrified by a photo taken of her in 1974, she retired completely, devoting herself to Christian Science and the increasing use of vodka. Her four adopted children received little from her $2-million estate: $77,500 each for Cathy and Cindy, nothing for Christopher or Christina Crawford “for reasons best known to them”.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Al Corley (born May 22, 1956 in Wichita, Kansas) is an American actor, singer and producer. In the late 1970s, he worked as a doorman at Studio 54. He would later appear in a VH1Behind the Music special on Studio 54 to recount his experiences.
Corley is best known as the first actor to play Steven Carrington on the 1980s soap opera Dynasty. After that, Corley acted in 14 movies, then produced five. Corley left Dynasty at the end of the second season in 1982[1][2] after complaining about Steven’s “ever-shifting sexual preferences”[3] and wanting “to do other things”.[2] The character was recast in 1983 with Jack Coleman; the change in appearance attributed to plastic surgery after an oil rig explosion.[1][2] Coleman remained on the show until 1988, but Corley returned to the role of Steven for the 1991 miniseriesDynasty: The Reunion when Coleman was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts.[3]
He was also known as a singer in the 1980s. His 1984 new wave single “Square Rooms“, from his debut album of the same name became a number one hit in France (in 1985), also reaching No. 6 in Switzerland, No. 12 in Italy (in 1985), No. 13 in Germany, No. 15 in Austria and No. 80 in the U.S. The same year, he released “Cold Dresses”, which was also a big hit in France, reaching No. 5. His second album, Riot of Color was released in 1986, and a third album, Big Picture followed in 1988.
He was married in 1989 to actress Jessika Cardinahl. They have three children: Sophie Elena, Ruby Cardinahl and Clyde Nikolai Corley. Before his marriage, he had a brief romance with pop star Carly Simon. It was Corley (with his back to the camera) that appeared with Simon on the cover art shot for her 1981 album Torch.
James Timothy “Tim” Daly (born March 1, 1956) is an American stage, screen and voice actor, director and producer. He is best known for his television role as Joe Hackett on theNBC sitcom Wings and for his voice role as Superman/Clark Kent in Superman: The Animated Series, as well as his recurring role of the drug-addicted screenwriter J.T. Dolan on The Sopranos for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. He starred as Pete Wilder on Private Practice from 2007 to 2012.
Daly was born in New York City,[1] the only son and youngest child of actors James Daly and Mary Hope Newell.[He is the younger brother of actress Tyne Daly, who is 10 years his senior, and is a brother-in-law of television and film composer Mark Snow.[3] He has two other sisters, Mary Glynn (Snow’s wife)[4] and Pegeen Michael. He is of part Irish ancestry. Daly attended The Putney School,[5] where he started to study acting.
Daly began his professional career while a student at Vermont‘s Bennington College, where he studied theatre and literature, in which he now holds a Bachelor of Arts,]and acted in summer stock. He graduated from college in 1979 and returned to New York to continue studying acting and singing.
Daly debuted on stage when he was seven years old in Jenny Kissed Me by Jean Kerr, together with his parents and two sisters. He appeared for the first time on TV when he was 10 years old in an American Playhouse adaptation of An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, which starred his father James Daly. He dreamed about a sports or music career and also considered becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but finally decided to become an actor. Daly started his professional acting career when he appeared in a 1978 adaptation of Peter Shaffer‘s play Equus.
In theatre he has starred in the Broadway production of Coastal Disturbances by playwright Tina Howe opposite Annette Bening and received a 1987 Theatre World Award for his performance. He has also starred in Oliver, Oliver at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Mass Appeal by Bill C. Davis and Bus Stop by William Inge at Trinity Square Repertory, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at the Santa Fe Festival Theatre, A Knife in the Heart and A Study in Scarlet at the Williamstown Playhouse, and Paris Bound at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. During this time, Daly also starred in the CBS television miniseries I’ll Take Manhattan as Toby Amberville.
Daly describes himself as being highly self-critical in regards to his career. In an interview with New Zealand ‘ZM’ radio personality Polly Gillespie Tim was quoted to say “I think part of it (his self-critical nature) is passed down to me from my parents who are actors. The theatre was our temple… When you entered you were expected to live up to the example of this glorious place.”
The above Wikipedia entry can also be accessed online here
