Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 60 of 124

Gene Tierney

“Gene Tierney was as sleek and as beautiful as a lynx – a shade warmer perhaps, but nowhere near as agile. Once she emerged from the miscasting which almost wrecked her career at the outset, she was neither very good or very bad. She was simply there on the screen – which when you come to look at her, was not at all a bad place for her to be” – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years” (1972)

Gene Tierney was one of the most beautiful actresses of Hollywood movies of the 1940’s. She was born in 1920 in New York. She made her stage debut on Broadway in 1838 in “What A Life”. In 1940 she won a contract for movies with 20th Century Fox and came West. Her debut was in “The Return of Frank James” opposite Henry Fonda, a well regarded Western. She made a number of film classics including “Laura” in 1944, “The Ghost and Mrs Muir” and magnificant “Leave Her to Heaven” with Jeanne Crain. Her film career tapered off in the 1960’s although she made occasional television appearances including “Scruples” in 1980. She died in 1991.

TCM Overview:

When Paramount Pictures fumbled Gene Tierney’s proposed film debut in its aborted adaptation of “National Velvet,” 20th Century Fox saw promise in the gimlet-eyed beauty with the regal cheekbones and curiously beguiling overbite. Honing her craft under extreme conditions – she brooked the tempers of such autocratic émigrés as Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch and Otto Preminger – Tierney emerged as a leading lady of equal beauty and depth. Gliding seamlessly from smoldering sensuality in Preminger’s “Laura” (1944), to sang froid psychopathy in John M. Stahl’s “Leave Her to Heaven” (1945), to a maturity and grace far beyond her years in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1947), Tierney attained a strata of celebrity that put her on par with fellow sirens Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. Her personal life was no less dramatic, punctuated by a controversial marriage to designer Oleg Cassini, the traumatic birth of her first child, whose severe mental retardation resulted in lifelong institutionalization, love affairs with several leading men and a future U.S. president, and a devastating bipolar disorder that effectively quashed her career. Tierney’s 1979 memoirs laid bare the devastation wrought by her inner demons while allowing the troubled actress to emerge on the far side of her troubles at some measure of peace with her legacy as “the most beautiful woman in film history.”

Gene Eliza Tierney was born on Nov. 19, 1920, in Brooklyn, NY. The second of three children of insurance broker Howard Sherwood Tierney and the former Belle Lavina Taylor, Tierney was named after a maternal uncle who had died from diabetes at age 17. When Tierney was five, the family traded Brooklyn for a modest country home in Green’s Farms, CT. Over the years, Howard Tierney would buy up increasing amounts of the surrounding land, ultimately building a more ostentatious family manor in the meadow across the street and filling it with servants and a German nanny for his three children. Educated first at the all girls’ St. Margaret’s School in Waterbury, which her mother had attended as a child, Tierney continued her studies at the arts-centered Unquowa School in Fairfield. A budding poet, she had her first works published in the school newspaper and played Jo in a student production of “Little Women.” At her own insistence, Tierney was packed off to finishing school in Switzerland, to the Brillantmont International School in Lausanne.

At Brillantmont, Tierney spoke only French and spent Christmas holidays with fellow students in England and Norway. Returning to the United States a more mature, albeit pudgier young woman, Tierney topped off her education at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, where the rigorous academic and athletic regime helped her shave 20 pounds off of her 5′ 4″ frame. Upon graduation in 1938, Tierney was sent with her mother and siblings on vacation to California. Through a connection at Warner Brothers, Howard Tierney got his family onto the lot to watch the shooting of “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” (1939) and meet with star Bette Davis. According to the legend, director Anatole Litvak spotted Tierney on the sidelines and exclaimed “Young woman, you ought to be in pictures!” Her screen test was scheduled for the next day, at which time she was asked to read a Dorothy Parker monologue. That evening, she was offered a studio contract.

Feeling that his underage daughter would be better served by returning home to make her society debut, Howard Tierney called his daughter back to Connecticut. She had her coming out party at the Fairfield Country Club in September 1938, in a dress copied from one Bette Davis wore in “Jezebel” (1938). Despite this concession to propriety, Tierney had no interest in the life of a debutante. If Hollywood was denied her, she would try her luck on Broadway. Success was not immediately forthcoming and she was offered more jobs as a model than as an actress. Between assignments, Tierney studied acting with Broadway director Benno Schneider while becoming a protégée of esteemed producer-director George Abbott. Abbott gave the newcomer a walk-on in his production of “What a Life!” in 1938 and hired her as an understudy for “Primrose Path” the following year. Tierney made her Broadway debut for Abbott in “Miss O’Brien Entertains” at the Lyceum Theater in February 1939.

Graced with gimlet green eyes, imperious cheekbones, and a pronounced overbite that often made her closed lips appear to be in perpetual pucker, Tierney’s beauty never failed to attract critical attention no matter how small the role, prompting The New York Herald Tribune to suggest that she had a bright future in theatre unless she were kidnapped for pictures. That very thing occurred when Tierney was offered a limited contract by Paramount. Having acquired rights to Enid Bagnold’s 1933 novel National Velvet, the studio thought Tierney a perfect fit to play an English schoolgirl who poses as a male jockey to enter the Grand National Steeplechase. When Paramount passed the property to MGM – who made it in 1944 with a 12 year-old Elizabeth Taylor – Tierney returned to Broadway, scoring a critical coup in the James Thurber-Elliot Nugent comedy “The Male Animal.” During the play’s seven month run, Tierney was photographed by Vogue, Life and Colliers Weekly, which caught the eye of 20th Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck. He was quick to offer an exclusive contract to Tierney, whom he would later characterize as “unquestionably the most beautiful woman in movie history.”

Tierney made her film debut for Fox in “The Return of Frank James” (1940), directed by German émigré Fritz Lang. The autocratic Lang clashed mightily on set with stars Henry Fonda and Jackie Cooper and spared Tierney little of his trademark ire. To her credit, Tierney took Lang’s often cruel criticisms to heart, gleaning from his insults pearls of practical advice for film acting. With the success of the Lang picture, additional roles followed for Tierney, who was paired with Paul Muni in Irving Pichel’s historic drama “Hudson’s Bay” (1941) and joined the ensemble cast of John Ford’s “Tobacco Road” (1941), the studio’s highly-anticipated adaptation of the novel by Erskine Caldwell. Just as “Tobacco Road” had been Fox’s bid to capitalize on the success of Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939), so the popularity of “Gone with the Wind” (1939), which Selznick had produced with MGM, was channeled into another Technicolor costumer. Tierney received star billing for playing “Belle Starr” (1941), a highly sanitized take on the short life and troubled times of the Wild West outlaw.

Despite starring in her first Hollywood film, Tierney was still considered a minor in the eyes of the law. Though her parents had by this point separated, Howard and Belle Tierney continued to exert influence over their daughter’s career, for which they had set up the Belle-Tier Corporation. With her self-confidence undermined by her parents’ rapidly dissolving marriage, Tierney suffered from a host of anxiety-related gastrointestinal ailments and an ocular disability that held up production of “Belle Starr.” During her convalescence, she sought refuge in the arms of boyfriend Oleg Cassini, the Paris-born son of an Italian countess and Edith Head’s assistant in the Paramount costume department. In June 1941, Tierney and Cassini flew to Las Vegas to be married in a civil ceremony. The controversial marriage worsened Tierney’s relationship with her parents while alarming Hollywood executives to the degree that Cassini was fired by Paramount. Tierney also discovered that her father has siphoned off her Hollywood earnings via the Bel-Tier Corporation.

At this point in her career, Tierney could at least count on a wealth of work offers. In addition, the appreciation of her Hollywood stock enabled her to retain Cassini as her personal costumer. She was given a plum role in Ernst Lubitsch’s Technicolor comedy “Heaven Can Wait” (1943), as doomed rogue Don Ameche’s long suffering wife. Tierney locked antlers often with Lubitsch during production while also attempting to conceal from her coworkers the fact that she was pregnant. The joy to which Tierney and Cassini (then fulfilling his wartime military service with the United States Army at Fort Riley in Kansas) looked forward was cruelly dashed when the actress contracted rubella after making an appearance at The Hollywood Canteen. Their first child, daughter Antoinette Daria Cassini, was born two months prematurely and suffered from severe mental retardation, ultimately requiring lifelong institutionalization. She would later learn that it was her own stardom that impacted the child’s health when a fan later told her she had broken quarantine for rubella to meet her at the Canteen. The tragedy caused a strain on the Tierney-Cassini marriage, leading to a separation. The pair reconciled and their second child, Tina, was born without complications in 1948.

Tierney was kept out of the picture for most of Otto Preminger’s seminal film noir “Laura” (1944), in the role of a presumed murder victim whose haunting portrait inspires detective Dana Andrews to track down her killer. A multiple Academy Award nominee (and Oscar winner for Best Black & White Cinematography), “Laura” urged Tierney on to a larger role in an even darker psychological thriller. As the femme fatale of “Leave Her to Heaven” (1945), Tierney was nominated for an Academy Award as an icy beauty so venal she allows a handicapped boy to drown so that she might maintain an emotional stranglehold on leading man Cornel Wilde. The film was Fox’s most successful of the decade and marked Tierney’s entre to the A-list while also securing her a measure of cult notoriety on par with Barbara Stanwyck in “Double Indemnity” (1944), Rita Hayworth in “Gilda” (1946) and Lana Turner in “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946). While filming “Dragonwyck” (1946) during her separation from Cassini, Tierney enjoyed a dalliance with war hero John F. Kennedy, then pointed towards a brilliant political career.

Persuasive as a spoiled rich girl who cannot share Tyrone Power’s spiritual interests in “The Razor’s Edge” (1946), Tierney offered moviegoers a dramatic about-face in her next film, as the widowed heroine of Mankiewicz’s “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1947). Tierney’s heartfelt performance as a single mother who accepts companionship and a second chance at love from spectral sea captain Rex Harrison, was a hit with moviegoers. She reteamed with Otto Preminger for the thrillers “Whirlpool” (1949) and “Where the Sidewalk Ends” (1950), and traveled to England for a choice role opposite Richard Widmark in blacklisted director Jules Dassin’s “Night and the City” (1950). On loan to other studios, Tierney showed a lighter side in the Paramount screwball comedy “The Mating Season” (1951) while playing it straight in the adoption drama Close to My Heart” (1951), with Ray Milland. Divorced from Oleg Cassini in 1952, she had relationships with Spencer Tracy while shooting “Plymouth Adventure” (1952) and with Clark Gable between takes on “Never Let Me Go” (1953).

Due in large part to the guilt and sadness related to her daughter’s institutionalization, Tierney began to suffer from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder which took a toll on her work. She excused herself from John Ford’s “Mogambo” (1953), for which she was replaced by Grace Kelly, and sought psychiatric help after wrapping Edward Dmytryk’s “The Left Hand of God” (1955). Tierney’s treatments would drag on for years, comprising nearly 30 sessions of shock therapy and days wrapped in icy sheets to control her wild mood swings. Released from one East Coast clinic, Tierney’s suicidal ideations drove her to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, KS. During a hiatus from treatment, she worked briefly as a store clerk in at Talmage’s Ladies Apparel Shop in nearby Westboro, until the press got wind of her situation and forced Tierney to go public with her humbling personal history. In 1958, Tierney met Texas oilman Howard Lee, then the estranged husband of actress Hedy Lamarr. Tierney and Lee married in 1960 and settled in Houston, where the former actress wrote a newspaper column and became an expert at contract bridge.

By Richard Harland Smith

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Editorial use only. No book cover usage. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Mgm/Kobal/Shutterstock (5871066d) Spencer Tracy, Gene Tierney, Van Johnson, Leo Genn, Dawn Addams Plymouth Adventure – 1952 Director: Clarence Brown MGM USA Lobby Card/Poster

Despite her self-imposed exile in Texas, Tierney received work offers from Hollywood, prompting her to mull a comeback. She tested the waters by appearing in a November 1960 broadcast of “General Electric Theater” (CBS, 1953-1962), during which time she discovered that she was again pregnant. Slated to appear in Fox’s “Return to Peyton Place” (1961), she withdrew from the production after suffering a miscarriage. She contributed a small role as the catty Washington mistress of Senate Majority Leader Walter Pidgeon in Otto Preminger’s “Advise and Consent” (1962) and appeared as Dean Martin’s domineering mother-in-law in “Toys in the Attic” (1963), George Roy Hill’s film adaptation of the stage play by Lillian Hellman. She made her final feature film appearance in “The Pleasure Seekers” (1963), opposite Ann-Margret and Brian Keith. At the distance of several years, she returned to television in “Daughter of the Mind” (1969), reuniting with old co-star Ray Milland in the chilling tale of a scientist haunted by the specter of his long-dead daughter.

In 1979, Tierney published her memoirs, detailing her cherished childhood memories, her schoolgirl years abroad, her triumphs on Broadway and in Hollywood, and the nightmare years of her descent into mental illness. Lured out of retirement yet again, she signed on to play lesbian magazine publisher Harriet Toppingham in the CBS miniseries “Scruples” (1980), based on the best-selling novel by Judith Krantz. The following year, Howard Lee died. Tierney remained in Houston for the next decade, during which time she was diagnosed with emphysema, which she developed from a lifelong cigarette habit adopted in Hollywood as a means of lowering the timbre of her speaking voice. Gene Tierney died on Nov. 6, 1991, two weeks shy of what would have been her 71st birthday

Jackie Cooper was born in 1922 in Los Angeles. He was one of the leading child actors in Hollywood in the 1930’s. He starred in the “Our Gang” series and in 1931 signed a contract with MGM. He starred opposite Wallace Beery in a series of movies including the well-regarded tearkerker “The Champ”. Among his other films was “Life with Henry” in 1941. He became a well-respected television direcor who acted on occasion. In the late 1970’s he played Perry White in the ‘Superman@ films. He died in 2011.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:

Jackie Cooper, who has died aged 88, was the first child star of the talkies, paving the way for Freddie Bartholomew, Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney. While they could turn on the waterworks when called for, Cooper beat them all easily at the crying game. Little Jackie, from the age of eight until his early teens, blubbed his way effectively through a number of tearjerkers. Sometimes he would try to suppress his tears, pouting and saying, “Ah, shucks! Ah, shucks!” As a critic wrote in 1934: “Jackie Cooper’s tear ducts, having been more or less in abeyance for the past few months, have been opened up to provide an autumn freshet in Peck’s Bad Boy.”

Cooper had started off in the movies billed as “the little tough guy” in eight of Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedy shorts. He was a manly little fellow and complained to his mother when, during the shooting of the fight scene in Dinky (1935), the other children were warned to be careful not to hurt him. “I don’t want fellows like these to treat me like a sissy!” he said.

The sobbing all began with Skippy (1931), based on a popular comic strip, for which Cooper was Oscar-nominated (aged nine and still the youngest best actor nominee) in his first starring role. When he refused to do a crying scene on the set, the film’s director, Norman Taurog, who was also his uncle, threatened to shoot Jackie’s dog. (The title of Cooper’s 1981 autobiography was Please Don’t Shoot My Dog.)

“Later, people tried to rationalise to me that I had gained more than I lost by being a child star,” Cooper wrote. “They talked to me about the money I made. They cited the exciting things I had done, the people I had met, the career training I had had, all that and much more … But no amount of rationalisation, no excuses, can make up for what a kid loses – what I lost – when a normal childhood is abandoned for an early movie career.”

He was born John Cooper Jr into a movie family in Los Angeles. His father, John, was a studio production manager who walked out on his family when Jackie was two. His mother, Mabel, was a picture palace pianist. Jackie started in show business at the age of three, appearing as an extra with his grandmother, who used to tote him along while looking for film work.

In 1931 Cooper made the three films that launched his career. Skippy told of the adventures of two friends, Cooper, in the title role, and Bobby Coogan (younger brother of Jackie “the Kid” Coogan) as Sooky, from different sides of the tracks. Both gave entirely natural performances, and a sequel almost as popular, called Sooky, also directed by Taurog, followed.

King Vidor’s The Champ was a touching tale of an ex-champion prizefighter (Wallace Beery) and his small son (Cooper) trying to scrape a living in Tijuana, Mexico. Beery is addicted to gambling and drink, but in the eyes of his hero-worshipping son, he’s still “Champ”. Despite warnings from his doctor about his heart, he wins a comeback fight, but the terrible beating he has taken in the process causes him to collapse and die in the dressing room, in the arms of his weeping son.

Cooper was the antithesis of the grizzled, good-bad ugly guy Beery, yet the chemistry between them was remarkable. Cooper would relate years later that Beery off-camera was a disagreeable man. Cooper remembers that he once impulsively threw his arms around Beery after an especially well-played tender scene and that the gruff Beery pushed him away. Cooper produced genuine tears.

The duo would make three further films together. In Raoul Walsh’s rousing The Bowery (1933) and the sentimental O’Shaughnessy’s Boy (1935), the oafish Beery tries to win Cooper’s affection. However, the film that Cooper was justifiably most proud of was Treasure Island (1934), in which both he, as Jim Hawkins, and Beery, as Long John Silver, were excellent.

The Devil Is a Sissy (1936) starred MGM’s three top child actors: prissy Bartholomew, a hit in the title roles of David Copperfield and Little Lord Fauntleroy; lachrymose Cooper; and the up-and-coming, pugnacious Rooney. “The studio used to threaten my mother with Bartholomew, and even me,” Cooper commented in adulthood. “They’d say, ‘Now, if you’re not better in this today, we’re going to get Freddie Bartholomew.’ They set up this kind of competition, which isn’t nice.”

By 1936, despite his popularity, Cooper had reached his teens, and MGM decided not to renew his contract. After leaving the glossiest of Hollywood studios, he went to Monogram, the poorest, for an atmospheric programmer called Boy of the Streets (1937). He continued to be active playing teenagers for the next six years, appearing mostly in B-movies, with a few exceptions: That Certain Age (1938), as Deanna Durbin’s young beau, and in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), as Lana Turner’s brother. In Glamour Boy (1941), Cooper played an ex-child star who suggests the studio remake Skippy, the film that made him famous, with a new kiddie.

When America entered the second world war, Cooper served in the US navy with the rank of captain. After the war, he found little work in Hollywood and moved to television, having overcome a drinking problem. There were a couple of notable TV series: The People’s Choice (1955-58), a sitcom in which he had a basset hound whose thoughts were given voice for the audience; and Hennesey (1959-62), in which Cooper was a naval doctor at a US military base.

Cooper returned to the big screen after 13 years in an inane comedy, Everything’s Ducky (1961), with Rooney and a talking duck. But most of his time was taken up as an executive producer for Screen Gems, the TV subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, where he worked on the sitcoms Bewitched, The Donna Reed Show and Hazel.

In 1972 Cooper directed his only feature film, Stand Up and Be Counted, starring Jacqueline Bisset. Touted as the first American film about women’s lib, it received tepid reviews – such as one in the New York Times claiming that “it erratically skips between comedy and serious causes, with somewhat less than impressive impact either way”. More rewardingly, Cooper was busy directing numerous TV shows, and won Emmy awards for episodes of M*A*S*H (1974) and The White Shadow (1979).

More than four decades after he had been the biggest little star around, Cooper found himself in the full spotlight again when he was cast as the tough-talking, cigar-chomping Perry White, editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet, in four Superman films (1978-87). Cooper got the nod after the original choice, Keenan Wynn, had to drop out while on the set in London, due to heart problems.

Cooper was married three times and had four children, of whom his two sons, John and Russell, survive him. None of them went into show business, on the wishes of their father. “It’s no way for a kid to grow up,” Cooper explained.

• Jackie (John) Cooper, actor and director, born 15 September 1922; died 3 May 2011

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

Cornelia Sharpe was born in 1943 in Selma, Alabama. For a time in the 1970’s she had some leading roles in major movies opposite such famous actors as Al Pacino in “Serpico” in 1932 and Sean Connery in “The Next Man” in 1976.

IMDB entry:

Cornelia Sharpe was born on October 18, 1943 in Selma, Alabama, USA. She is an actress, known for Serpico (1973), The Next Man (1976) and S+H+E: Security Hazards Expert (1980). She has been married to Martin Bregman since 1981. They have one child. Former fashion model. Her father is Warner Jack Sharpe, Jr., a dental supplier and her mother is Evelyn Horne Sharpe, a dental assistant and secretary. She was raised in Jacksonville, Florida and graduated from Robert E Lee High School in Jacksonville in 1961. Her daughter with husband Martin Bregman Marissa Cornelia Bregman was born in 1982. Mother of Marissa Bregman. Stepmother of Michael Bregman and Christopher Bregman.

Cass Daley

Cass Daley was born in 1915 in Philaadelphia. She was a populat supporting player in Hollywood films of the 1940’s. Her movies include “The Fleet’s In” in 1942 with Dorothy Lamour and Betty Hutton and “Duffy’s Tavern”. She died in 1975 as a result of a fall in her home.

IMDB entry:

Brassy, gangly Cass Daley, the daughter of a streetcar conductor, started her career as a band vocalist. She displayed a flair for zany comedy that made her a big hit in nightclubs and on radio, and she started working in films in the early 1940s. Her eccentric, off-the-wall singing and dancing combined with her gawky, buck-toothed appearance endeared her to movie audiences in the 1940s and 1950s, most notably in knockabout comics Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson‘s Crazy House (1943), in which she played both herself and a goofy lookalike, “Sadie Silverfish”. She retired from films in the 1950s and made only occasional appearances into the 1970s. She died in a freak accident at home when she fell over a glass table and a shard of broken glass slashed her neck, causing her to bleed to death.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: frankfob2@yahoo.com

John McGiver was born in 1913. He was well into middle-age before he became a popular character actor on film. His debut was as the salesman in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s ” with Audrey Hepburn. Other movie roles include “The Manchurian Candidate” in 1962 and “Midnight Cowboy” in 1969 with Jon Voight. He died in 1975 at the age of 61.

IMDB entry:

John Irwin McGiver came to acting relatively late in life. He held a B.A. and Masters degrees in English from Fordham, Columbia and Catholic Universities and spent his early years teaching drama and speech at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx. He had an early flirt with the acting profession in 1938 as actor/director for the Irish Repertory Theatre but found his weekly income of $26.42 insufficient to live on. He enlisted the next year and saw action during World War II, fighting with the U.S. 7th Armored Division in Europe (including the Battle of the Bulge). When he was demobbed after six years in the army, he held the rank of captain. He returned to teaching drama, with occasional forays into off-Broadway acting. In 1947, he married Chicago scenic designer Ruth Shmigelsky and settled down to live in a converted 19th century former Baptist church.

There are conflicting stories as to how McGiver ended up becoming a film and television actor, but it happened sometime after one of his part-time acting performances in September 1955, either through the offices of an old University classmate, turned stage producer, or through the persuasive abilities of an agent from the Music Corporation of America. In any case, the portly, balding, owl-like and precisely-spoken McGiver quickly developed an inimitable style as a comic (and occasionally serious) actor on television and in films. He was most memorable as the obtuse landscape contractor in The Gazebo(1959), a pompous jewelry salesman in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) and an inept twitcher in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962). He also played “Mr. Sowerberry” in a television version of The DuPont Show of the Month: Oliver Twist (1959) and starred in his own (sadly short-lived) TV show, Many Happy Returns (1964) as the complaints manager of a department store. His dramatic roles included a senator in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and, on television, the corrupt mayor in The Front Page (1970), plus a rare villainous role in the TV episode The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Birds and the Bees Affair (1966). Among his numerous guest starring roles on television, he was at his best as the self-absorbed “Roswell Flemington”, who learns a moral lesson in Twilight Zone: Sounds and Silences (1964) (1964).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Joan O’Brien. Wikipedia.

For a time in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Joan O’Brien had a series of major leading roles opposite some powerhouse male stars such as Jerry Lewis , John Wayne and Elvis Presley. Oddly another actress starred opposite the same leading men at roughly the same time, that was Ina Balin. Joan O’Brien was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her movies include “Operation Petticoat” in 1959, “The Alamo” and “It Happened at the World’s Fair”.

IMDB entry:
Joan O’Brien began her show-biz career while she was in high school, on a local TV music show in California with Tennessee Ernie Ford. Soon she was a successful singer, and made the jump to acting. In about half the films she ever made it appeared that Joan played a nurse. Perhaps her most memorable appearance was in Blake Edwards‘Operation Petticoat (1959), as the nurse who gets in everyone’s way because her, umm, “proportions” cause uncomfortable crowding in a small submarine.

Because of her, Cary Grant becomes the first officer in the history of the U.S. Navy to sink an enemy truck! She again played a nurse in the Jerry Lewis film _It’s Only Money (1963)_ and yet one more time with Elvis Presley in It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963)–and, according to legend, fired up a hot off-screen romance with Elvis.

Also in 1963, in a strange sort of “Columbo” connection, she was voted “most likely to wed Robert Vaughn“. Joan’s final movie was Get Yourself a College Girl (1964), a “Swinging Sixties” teenfest also featuringNancy Sinatra, with music by The Animals and The Dave Clark Five.

After that she went back to singing for a while, touring with the Harry James Orchestra. She left show business for good to concentrate on raising her kids, and later became a successful executive with the Hilton Hotel chain.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: johnnymac@elvis.c

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here

Joseph Hindy

Joseph Hindy was born in 1939. His first role in 1970 is perhaps his best known opposite Diane Keaton in the wonderful comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers”. He has guest starred in many TV shows such as “Streets of San Francisco” and “Kojack”.

: Mary Robin-Redd

Mary Robin-Redd was born in 1939. She made her TV debut in 1958 in “Highway Patrol”. She is primarily know for her role in Sidney Lumet’s “The Group” in 1966. Her other movies include “J.W. Coop” and “The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid”.

IMDB entry:

Mary-Robin Redd was born on March 18, 1939 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for The Group (1966), Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) and Quarterback Princess (1983).

Daughter of Gogo De Lys

Richard Benjamin was born in 1938 in New York City. He is now a film director but in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s he gave some terrific performances in such films as “Goodbye Columbus” in 1969 with Ali MacGraw, “The Sunshine Boys” with Walter Matthau and George Burns and “Westworld” with Yul Brynner in 1974. He is married to Paula Prentiss.

TCM overview:

Best known for his characterizations of two Philip Roth characters, in “Goodbye Columbus” (1969) and “Portnoy’s Complaint” (1972), Benjamin had walk-on juvenile parts in some 1950s films and first earned adult recognition on Broadway, starring in Neil Simon’s “Star-Spangled Girl” (1966). He had directed “Barefoot in the Park” in London the previous year. Other off-beat acting highlights include “Catch-22” (1970) and “The Sunshine Boys” (1975).

Benjamin made a promising directorial debut with “My Favorite Year” (1982), a comic look at the early days of TV featuring a glorious performance by Peter O’Toole. However his subsequent directorial efforts have not been comparable commercially or critically. A conventional storyteller, Benjamin has worked with a wide assortment of actors in several genres. His second film, “Racing With the Moon” (1984), was a war romance starring Sean Penn and Elizabeth McGovern. Benjamin followed up with a pair of undistinguished comedies: “City Heat” (1984), a period detective comedy starring Burt Reynolds and a surprisingly funny Clint Eastwood and “The Money Pit” (1986), featuring Tom Hanks, Shelly Long, and a collapsing house in a Steven Spielberg-produced comedy which confused laughs with special effects. Benjamin’s spy drama, “Little Nikita” (1988), offered the intriguing pairing of Sidney Poitier and River Phoenix, but audiences steered clear. Benjamin also tried his hand at high-concept comedy with “My Stepmother Is an Alien” (1988) with Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger and moved on to an action comedy, “Downtown” (1990), with Anthony Edwards and Forest Whitaker. Benjamin regained some degree of critical success that same year with “Mermaids”, a touching mother-daughter comedy starring Cher, Winona Ryder, and Bob Hoskins. After a hiatus, he directed Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson in the romantic comedy, “Made in America” (1993) and helmed the pallid “Mrs. Winterbourne” (1996), which starred Ricki Lake and Shirley MacLaine.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Gene Tierney

Jackie Cooper

Cornelia Sharpe

Cass Daley

John McGiver

Joan O’Brien

Joan O’Brien. Wikipedia.

Joseph Hindy

Mary Robin-Redd

Richard Benjamin

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