Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 84 of 126

Carroll O’Connor

Carroll O’Connor is best known for his role as Archie Bunker in the American sitcom series “All in the Family” which ran from 1971 until 1979. He was born in Manhatten in 1924. After military service during World War Two he studied acting in Dublin. Among his films was “Kelly’s Heros” with Clint Eastwood. Carroll O’Connor died in 2001.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

A few years ago, I gave a couple of lectures on the QEII, sailing from New York to Southampton. In the dining room, I was at a table with the Supremes and a quietly spoken, middle-aged American couple. I was surprised when many of the American passengers, almost ignoring the three female singers, came up to the shy, thick-set man, and greeted him as “Archie”.

It turned out that my table companion was one of the most famous actors in America. Carroll O’Connor, who has died of a heart attack aged 76, played Archie Bunker in the long-running TV series, All In The Family, from 1971 to 1979, and was then in Archie’s Bunker, from 1979 to 1983.

The show, which had an average of 50m viewers a week, was adapted from Till Death Do Us Part, and Bunker was as loud-mouthed, reactionary and misogynistic as his British equivalent, Alf Garnett. Tame as it was by today’s American TV standard, the series was a breakthrough after decades of bland sitcoms featuring wise and loveable parents, and it made O’Connor a household name.

During our voyage, I also discovered that O’ Connor, who was with Nancy, his wife since 1951, was nothing like his alter ego, being introverted, intellectual and liberal. “I never heard Archie’s kind of talk in my own family,” he said. “My father was in partnership with two Jews, and there were black families in our circle of friends.”

Despite having a lawyer father and a schoolteacher mother, O’ Connor was an extremely bad student, both at high school and college. During the second world war, he became a merchant seaman, sailing the North Atlantic, Caribbean and Mediterranean. In 1946, he returned to his mother’s house in the New York suburb of Queens (his father had been jailed for fraud) and began working for an Irish newspaper. With a burning desire to catch up on his education, he went back to college, and later enrolled at University College, Dublin, where he took a BA in Irish history and English literature in 1952.

At the same time, he started acting professionally at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, working under the direction of Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards. He also appeared in productions at the Edinburgh festival and around Ireland. Unable to find work on his return to New York in 1954, he taught for four years, before getting a part in Burgess Meredith’s Ulysses In Nighttown, adapted from the James Joyce novel.

This led to him being offered the part of the ruthless Hollywood boss Stanley Hoff in an off-Broadway production of Clifford Odets’s The Big Knife, and it was not long before O’Connor was making a reputation as a reliable supporting actor in several overblown movies of the 1960s. He played mostly authoritarian figures, such as army officers, in Otto Preminger’s In Harm’s Way (1965), What Did You Do In The War, Daddy? (1966), Not With My Wife, You Don’t! (1966), The Devil’s Brigade (1968) and Kelly’s Heroes (1970) – and might have continued in the same vein had it not been for the offer by producer-writer Norman Lear to star in All In The Family.

Despite many of the character’s despicable views, O’ Connor managed to make Archie a complex, sometimes even likeable, human being. “I have a great deal of sympathy for him,” he once said in an interview. “As James Baldwin wrote, ‘The white man here is trapped by his own history, a history that he himself cannot comprehend, and therefore what can I do but love him?'”

Archie, a blue-collar worker in a dead-end job, called his long-suffering wife (Jean Stapleton) “a dingbat,” his son- in-law (Rob Reiner) “a pinko Polack,” and his daughter (Sally Struthers) “a weepin’ nellie atheist.” He thought the Democratic party was a front for communism, and that women and blacks were getting too uppity. He was also a prude.

After Archie, O’ Connor returned to the stage, but Broth ers (1983), which he directed and played in as a tough union leader dominating his four sons, closed after only one performance on Broadway. A year later, Home Front, a play about a family terrorised by their distressed Vietnam vet son, ran for 13 performances. O’ Connor only found success again in 1988 with In The Heat Of The Night, a TV series based on the 1968 film, in which he played the redneck police chief originally portrayed by Rod Steiger.

One of the supporting parts was played by O’ Connor’s adopted son, Hugh, who shot himself in March 1995 after battling against alcohol and drug addiction. This episode explained the O’ Connors’ rather melancholy air when I met them on a trip to Europe in the same year.

It also explained why Carroll had given up show business to devote himself to an anti-drugs crusade. I learned later that he had faced a writ for slander from a man he had accused of providing cocaine to Hugh – and of thus being “a partner in murder.” The case was thrown out by a California jury in 1997, and the drug supplier was jailed for a year.

O’ Connor, who made a final screen appearance last year, as Minnie Driver’s grandfather in the mawkish melodrama Return to Me, is survived by his wife and grandson.

• Carroll O’ Connor, actor, born August 2 1924; died July 21 2001.

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

Fionnuala Flanagan.

Fionnaula Flanagan was born in Dublin in 1941. She made her film debut in 1967 in the Irish made “Ulysses”. The same year she was on Broadway in Brian Friel’s “Lovers”. She concentrated her career in the U.S. and settled in Hollywood. Throughout the 1970’s and 80’s she was featured in many of the major television series such as “Bonanza”, “Mannix”, “Shaft”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, “Kojack” and “Marcus Welby M.D. She won particular acclaim for her performance in the mini-series “Ricxh Man, Rich Man Poor Man”. From the 1990’s onwards she has become a wonderful presence on film are “Some Mother’s Son”, “Waking Ned”, “The Others”, “Transamerica” and “The Guard”.

TCM Overview:

Before moving to the USA from her native Ireland, the intense, attractive Fionnula Flanagan made her feature debut as Gerty McDowell in Joseph Strick’s fascinating but uneven filming of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (1967). On Broadway, she won critical acclaim and a Tony nomination as Molly Bloom in “Ulysses in Nighttown” (1974), co-starring Zero Mostel and staged by Burgess Meredith. Flanagan has also toured in her one-person show, “James Joyce’s Women,” in which she played among others, Nora Barnacle Joyce, Sylvia Beach, Harriet Shaw Weaver, and Molly Bloom. The play was adapted as a feature film in 1984, produced by Flanagan and her husband, Garrett O’Connor.

Her career, though, has not been limited to appearing in works by her countryman, but has also encompassed stage, screen and television. In 1968, the petite, auburn-haired Flanagan moved to America and landed her first stage role in “Lovers.” She segued to the small screen where she has had the most success to date. Flanagan has appeared in numerous TV longforms, beginning with the 1973 ABC remake of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” She was the Irish maid of the famed, but acquitted suspected murderess in “The Legend of Lizzie Borden” (ABC, 1975), won an Emmy for a supporting role in the ratings winner “Rich Man, Poor Man” (ABC, 1976), and was the wife to writer William Allen White, mourning their teenaged daughter’s death “Mary White” (ABC, 1977). That same year, she created the role of Molly, a widow finding her way on the frontier in “How the West Was Won,” a role she reprised in the series spin-off. Flanagan was mother to Valerie Bertinelli in “Young Love, First Love” (CBS, 1979) and starred in George Lucas’ TV-movie, “The Ewok Adventure” (ABC, 1984). She played mother again, this time to one-armed baseball player Pete Gray (Keith Carradine) in “A Winner Never Quits” (ABC, 1986). Other notable roles include the tough-talking lieutenant in the short-lived drama series “Hard Copy” (CBS, 1987), was a smooth-talking madam in “Final Verdict” (TNT, 1991), and portrayed a widow seeking answers about her husband’s death in a rafting accident in “White Mile” (HBO, 1994).

While her feature film work has been sporadic, Flanagan did receive particular notice as a nun in the Oscar-winning short “In the Region of Ice” (1976). Her other credits have ranged from John Huston’s “Sinful Davey” (1969), as the daughter of the Duke of Argyll, to several maternal roles. Among the latter are as Molly Ringwald’s mom in “P.K. and the Kid” (lensed 1982, released in 1987), as Mary Stuart Masterson’s overbearing parent in “Mad at the Moon” (1992) and as John Cusack’s mother in “Money For Nothing” (1993). She had one of her best screen roles in another motherly part, as a gruff Irish Catholic whose son is imprisoned for terrorist activities in Northern Ireland in “Some Mother’s Son” (1996). After returning to series TV as the matriarch of an Irish-American family on the CBS drama series “To Have and To Hold” (1998), Flanaghan garnered additional praise as the morally grounded wife of a scheming villager (Ian Bannen) in the genial comedy “Waking Ned Devine” (1998). She offered perhaps one of her best turns as the slightly creepy housekeeper in “The Others” (2001). She added memorable humor to the role of Teensy Melissa Whitman in the independent feature “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” (2002), a light-hearted film about a group of women who set out to mend a broken relationship between their “Ya-Ya Sister” and her daughter.

The following year, Flanagan displayed her serious side by taking on the role of Nurse Grace in Antione Fuqua’s “Tears of the Sun” (2003). An epic tale dedicated to, as director Fuqua stated, “all the men and women you protect us and go into places and do great things about which too little is said.” She then played the adoptive mother of four boys (two black, two white) seeking revenge for her murder after a grocery store robbery in “Four Brothers” (2005). Directed by John Singleton and starring Mark Wahlberg, Andre 3000, Tyrese Gibson and Garrett Hedlund as the avenging sons, “Four Brothers” was a straight-forward and often violent revenge thriller that either pleased or disappointed critics for its simplistic narrative. She then had a terrific supporting turn as the domineering, disapproving mother of a preoperative transexual (Felicity Huffman) who seeks shelter with her estranged family while traveling cross-country with the newly discovered son she fathered in her early life as a man in “Transamerica” (2005).

The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.

Martha Hyer obituary in “The Guardian” in 2014.

Martha Hyer was born in 1924 in Fort Worth, Texas. She made her debut in “The Locket” in 1946. She spent years in minor roles and then in the late 1950’s she stunned audiences with her strong performances in such films as “Some Came Running” in 1957 with Frank Sinatra, “Ice Palace” with Richard Burton and Carolyn Jones and “The Carpetbaggers” with Alan Ladd and Carroll Baker in 1964. Her final fim was “Crossplot” in 1969. Her husband was the producer Hal Wallis. She died in Santa Fe in May 2014.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:

There was a time in the 1950s and 60s when film buffs would have known what was meant by a “Martha Hyer role”. It evoked a classy, beautiful but cold woman, usually the one the hero aspires to, but realises, by the end, would not be good for him. This was typified by Hyer’s portrayal of the frosty schoolteacher in Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (1958), for whom a would-be writer (Frank Sinatra) hopelessly falls. “Your hands on me aren’t the least persuasive,” she tells him, unpersuasively. Later, in the film’s most subtle sequence, she is seduced, sobbing in silhouette while Sinatra picks the pins out of her hair. Hyer, who has died aged 89, deservedly earned a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for her performance.

Hyer was born in Fort Worth, Texas, one of three daughters of Agnes (nee Barnhart) and Julien Hyer. Her father was a judge who later took part in the trials at Nuremberg after the second world war. She studied speech and drama at Northwestern University in Illinois, before going to the Pasadena Playhouse in California. After being rejected by both Paramount and 20th Century Fox, she was finally given a contract with RKO in 1946.

After a few bit parts, she played pretty and bland female leads in several routine westerns. After her RKO contract ended, she starred in the low-budget fantasy thriller Oriental Evil (1951), as an American woman in Tokyo looking for the dastardly opium runner responsible for the death of her brother. The producer was Ray Stahl. Hyer and Stahl soon married and spent a year in Japan where Stahl co-produced and co-directed Geisha Girl (1952), in which Hyer played a detective disguised as a flight attendant on the track of Japanese gangsters.

Although she was seen in many cheesecake poses in film fan magazines, her screen career failed to catch fire, mainly because of her association with the schlock produced by her husband. In 1953, after finishing her scenes for the lame colonial adventure The Scarlet Spear in Kenya, Hyer left Stahl in Africa and, realising that she would always come second to his mother in his affections, divorced him.

From the mid-50s, aside from playing straight woman to Abbott and Costello and Francis the Talking Mule, Hyer started to establish her snooty screen persona in better parts in better movies: in 1954 the heiress engaged to a playboy (William Holden) in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina, the antithesis of Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn), who steals Holden’s heart; and, in Lucky Me, an oilman’s snobbish daughter standing in the way of Doris Day and Robert Cummings. In a similar vein, Hyer was the socialite who employs a hobo (David Niven) as her butler in the remake of My Man Godfrey (1957) and attempts to prevent a widower (Cary Grant) from falling in love with his children’s nanny (Sophia Loren) in Houseboat (1958).

In the following years, the elegant Hyer was seen in a number of soapy sagas such as The Best of Everything (1959), Ice Palace (1960) and The Carpetbaggers (1964), hardly ever loosening her hairpins. She was the epitome of Alfred Hitchcock’s “cool blonde” who just lost out to Janet Leigh for the role of Marion Crane in Psycho (1960). If only she had got the part, she might have avoided Bikini Beach (1964), Pyro (1964), in which she is a jealous mistress who starts a fire that kills her lover’s wife, and Picture Mommy Dead (1966), in which she is a wicked stepmother. She had a chance to play a goodie in First Men in the Moon (1964), loosely based on HG Wells, in which Hyer and two male companions soar to the moon from Victorian England in a spherical capsule propelled by an anti-gravity element cooked up in the professor’s country lab.

In 1966, after being linked romantically to a number of handsome stars, including George Nader, who happened to be also seeing Rock Hudson at the time, Hyer married Hal Wallis, one of the biggest Hollywood producers. After the marriage, she cut down on acting, preferring to travel with Wallis and leading a ritzy social life. In fact, to finance her extravagant lifestyle, unbeknown to her husband she got into debt with loan sharks. But, in the early 1980s, Hyer was finally forced to confess. Wallis called in the FBI and the problems were solved with lawyers at great expense.

At the same time, Hyer found God among the glitz, a revelation she detailed in Finding My Way: A Hollywood Memoir (1990).

Wallis died in 1986.

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

“MailOnline” obituary:

Martha Hyer, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a schoolteacher in1958’s Some Came Running, has died at the age of 89.

A star of Hollywood’s Golden Age: Martha Hyer, Oscar nominee and Sabrina actress (pictured in 1956) has died at the age of 89

Hyer passed away at her home in Santa Fe, where she has lived since the mid 1980s, a representative from Rivera Funeral Home confirmed to the New Mexican newspaper, adding that no funeral service or memorial had been planned.Despite her Oscar nomination, the blonde beauty was most famous for her role as the stunning society fiancee of playboy David Larrabee (William Holden) in Audrey Hepburn’s 1954 romance Sabrina. The actress – who was born in Texas in 1924 – never capitalised on her Oscar nod, after losing out to Wendy Hiller for her role in Separate Tables.

A number of unsuccessful movies followed, Bikini Beach, House of 1,000 Dolls and Picture Mommy Dead , ‘all ones I’d rather forget,’ she wrote in her 1990 autobiography Finding My Way: A Hollywood Memoir.

However, during her career she worked with many of the Hollywood greats including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Humphrey Bogart and Rock Hudson.

She also turned down the young Senator John F. Kennedy when he once asked her out.

She married The Scarlet Spear director C. Ray Stahl in 1951 but the marriage ended in divorce three years later.

Martha then tied the knot with her The Sons of Katie Elderdirector Hal B. Wallis in 1966 and was with him until his death in 1986.

However, the spendthrift actress did complain in her memoir about his tightfistedness with money.

Her own spending got her in trouble and she admitted in her memoir that in the 1980s she owed millions to loan sharks.

The New Mexican reports that Wallis called in the FBI to help her clear her financial problems.

Hyer – who found God in the 1980s – moved to Santa Fe following her husband’s death in 1986 where she lived a quiet life painting and hiking with friends.

Speaking about her desire to remove herself from the spotlight, she said: ‘When you live with fame as a day-to-day reality, the allure of privacy and anonymity is as strong as the desire for fame for those who never had it.’

The “MailOnline” obituary can also be accessed online here.

IMDB Entry:

Martha Hyer was born on August 10, 1924 in Fort Worth, Texas. Once she finished her formal schooling, Martha played a bit role in 1946’s The Locket (1946). Slowly, Martha began picking up roles with more and more substance. The best years for the beautiful actress began in 1954 when she played in films such as Down Three Dark Streets (1954),Showdown at Abilene (1956) and Battle Hymn (1957). Perhaps the best role of her long career was as “Gwen French” in 1958’s Some Came Running (1958) in which she starred opposite Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. As a result of her stellar role, Martha received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, but she lost out to Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables (1958). Afterwards, Martha’s stint on the US silver screen’s trailed off some. She did make a handful of foreign films, returning to appear in the US from time to time, but nothing compared to the pace she had in the fifties. Her last film was in 1973 in the film The Day of the Wolves (1971). In 1966, she married producer Hal B. Wallis and remained with him until his death in 1986.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny JacksonThis placid blonde was once in the running for the role of Marion Crane in Hitchcock’sPsycho (1960), but lost out to Janet Leigh.Was once labeled “Universal’s answer to Grace Kelly“.Her classmates at Northwestern University included Cloris Leachman, Paul Lynde,Charlotte Rae, Charlton Heston, Patricia Neal and Agnes Nixon.In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by Rosetta Calavetta. At the beginning of her career she was occasionally dubbed by Miranda Bonansea and Giuliana Maroni. Towards the late fifties, Renata Marini and Anna Miserocchi also lent their voice to Hyer.Was discovered by an RKO talent agent while acting with the Pasadena Playhouse.Majored in drama and speech at Northwestern University.She is a staunch Republican and conservative.Member of Pi Beta Phi SororitThe above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Peter Van Eyck. TCM Overview.

Peter Van Eyck was born in Germany in 1911. In 1931 he left Germany and came eventually to New York where he worked for Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater. He was in Hollywood by 1943 where he made such films as “The Moon is Down”, “Five Graves to Cairo” and “Action in the North Atlantic”. Among his later films was “The Snorkel” with Betta St John and Many Miller in 1959. He died in Switzerland in 1969.

TCM Overview:
Peter van Eyck, born Götz von Eick (16 July 1911, Steinwehr, Pomerania, Germany (now Kamienny Jaz, Poland) – 15 July 1969, Männedorf bei Zürich, Switzerland), was a German-American actor. After graduating from high school he studied music. In 1931 he left Germany, living in Paris, London, Tunis, Algiers and Cuba, before settling in New York. He earned a living playing the piano in a bar, and wrote and composed for revues and cabarets. He then worked for Irving Berlin as a stage manager and production assistant, and for Orson Welles Mercury Theatre company as an assistant director. Van Eyck went to Hollywood where he found radio work with the help of Billy Wilder, who later gave him small film roles. In 1943 he took US citizenship and was drafted into the army.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

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He gained international recognition with a lead role in the 1953 film The Wages of Fear. He went to appear in episodes of several US TV series including The Adventures of Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In English-language films he was most often typecast as a Nazi or other unsympathetic German type, while in Germany he was a popular leading man in a wider range of films, including several appearances in the Dr. Mabuse thriller series of the 1960s. Van Eyck was married to the American actress Ruth Ford in the 1940s. With his second wife, Inge von Voris, he had two daughters, Kristina, also an actor, and Claudia.

Mercedes McCambridge obituary in “The Guardian” in 2004.

Mercedes McCambridge was a powerhouse of an actress who only made a few films but made an enormous impact. She was born in 1916 in Illinois to an Irish American Catholic family. She won an Oscar for her first performance in “All the King’s Men” in 1949. Other films include “Giant” in 1956, “Johnny Guitar” striking sparks off Joan Crawford and “Suddenly Last Summer”. She voiced the devil in the persona of Linda Blair in “The Exorcist”. She suffered unbelievable sorrow when her only child, her son Stephen killed his two daughters, his wife and himself in 1987. Mercedes McCambridge died in 2004.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

Hollywood has had its fair share of actors turned into lesbian icons – think of Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford or Greta Garbo – but none had a dykier screen persona than Mercedes McCambridge, who has died aged 87.

She played up this image in her cameo performance in Orson Welles’s Touch Of Evil (1958), as the duck-tailed, leather-jacketed leader of a band of Mexican bikers, wanting to watch Janet Leigh being raped in the motel room. This was a follow-up to perhaps her most famous role, that of the butch bitch who leads a posse against Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray’s baroque western, Johnny Guitar (1954).

The question posed by several critics about the latter role was whether McCambridge, as Emma Small, who owns “every head of cattle for 500 miles”, wanted to kill Crawford’s saloon-owning character Vienna, or sleep with her. Whatever the answer, McCambridge’s lynch-happy harpy was one of the most striking portrayals of a forceful woman in cinema.

Almost two decades later, she provided one of the eeriest sounds in films by voicing the demon inside Linda Blair, in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973). According to Welles, who co-starred with her in the Ford Theater series, it was, in fact, McCambridge’s versatile voice that made her “the world’s greatest living radio actress.”

Born in Joliet, Illinois, she had begun performing on radio while still at Loyola Catholic College, in Chicago, and went on to make a name for herself in the I Love A Mystery radio series, from 1939 to 1949. After a shortlived marriage to William Fifield, among the people she worked with was Canadian actor-writer-director Fletcher Markle, whom she married in 1950. The couple went to Hollywood in 1949, he to direct a few minor films, she to make her screen debut in Robert Rossen’s All The King’s Men, for which she promptly won an Oscar as best supporting actress.

In this movie, McCambridge is superb as Sadie Burke, the hard-boiled henchwoman and lover of populist southern demagogue Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford). Few actors could have taken, or convincingly merited, such a slap across the face as she receives from investigative journalist John Ireland.

It was Ireland again, as a mentally disturbed man on the run from an asylum, who almost murdered McCambridge, playing a tough, singing waitress called Cash And Carry Connie, in The Scarf (1951). She, in turn, was a murderer in King Vidor’s Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), killing Richard Todd’s wife out of jealousy.

Five years later, she was Oscar-nominated as best supporting actress for her performance in George Stevens’s Texas saga, Giant (1956). Here, she expressed an almost incestuous jealousy as Luz Benedict, Rock Hudson’s unmarried older sister, passionately at odds with Elizabeth Taylor, her brother’s wife. Her character is killed when she is thrown from the horse Warwinds, which she symbolically cannot master, in scenes enacted in masterful wide images and close-ups.

Following that, McCambridge made the most of her short screen time as Taylor’s avaricious mother prepared to permit her daughter, who “went off her rocker in Europe”, to have a lobotomy in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s film of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer (1959). Her line in boot-faced characters continued in Angel Baby (1961), as the shrewish wife of evangelist promoter George Hamilton.

It was about this time that McCambridge, recently divorced from Markle, with a young son to bring up, started to drink heavily. A devout Catholic, she claimed to have lost her faith. Along struggle against alcoholism ensued until she gave up drink in 1969, becoming a leading member of the US National Council on Alcoholism, while regaining her Catholic faith. (Her experiences were noted down in an autobiography, The Quality Of Mercy, in 1981.)

But none of this stopped her appearing as the sadistic, lesbian supervisor of a women’s prison on a Caribbean island in the exploitative 99 Women (1969), or happily lending her voice to the demon in The Exorcist. According to Friedkin: “When I started making The Exorcist, I had no idea how we were going to do the demon voice. I knew I wanted a voice that was neutral – neither male nor female – but with both male and female characteristics. In the end, the name Mercedes McCambridge came into my head. I spoke to her on the phone, and, to my joy, she sounded exactly as she had sounded 30 years earlier on the radio.

“She worked for, maybe, three weeks doing the demon voice. She was chain-smoking, swallowing raw eggs, getting me to tie her to a chair – all these painful things just to produce the sound of that demon in torment. And as she did it, the most curious things would happen in her throat. Double and triple sounds would emerge at once, wheezing sounds, very much akin to what you can imagine a person inhabited by various demons would sound like. It was pure inspiration.”

Unfortunately, when The Exorcist was released, Warner Brothers failed to credit her, so McCambridge sued the studio. On later prints, her credit reads, not “the voice of the demon”, as she would have preferred, but simply “and Mercedes McCambridge”.

Meanwhile, McCambridge was more active in the theatre: in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf on tour, and in the military courtroom drama, The Love Suicide Of Schofield Barracks, on Broadway in 1972, for which she was nominated for a Tony award. She also guest-starred in a number of television western series, among them Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

In 1987, a tragedy hit her family. Her son, John Markle, a high-flying economist, became involved in a financial scandal, and subsequently shot his wife and two daughters, and then himself. McCambridge soldiered on, continuing to perform on stage and winning plaudits in Los Angeles for her role in Neil Simon’s Lost In Yonkers (1992), as the grandmother who rules the household with a rod of iron.

Even then, she had lost little of what made her one of the most memorable of supporting actors.

· Charlotte Mercedes Agnes McCambridge, actor, born March 16 1916; died March 2 2004 The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Carlos Rivas was born in 1928 in Texas. His best known role was as Lun Tha in “The King and I” in 1956. He was also featured in “Comanche”, “The Deerslayer”, “The Miracle”. He died in 2003 at the age of 74

“Wikipedia” entry:

Carlos Rivas was an American actor, best remembered as Lun Tha inThe King and I (1956), Dirty Bob in True Grit (1969), and Hernandez in Topaz (1969). Rivas was born in El Paso, Texas, to a German father and Mexican mother. English was his first language. Carlos Rivas was discovered in a bar in Mexico. He began his career in Mexican and Argentinian westerns, though his Argentinian films were actually filmed in Mexico.

His American debut was in The King and I, (1956) opposite Rita Moreno. After this career highlight, he was quickly reduced to supporting roles.^[2] Rivas had co – starring roles in two science fiction films, The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956), and The Black Scorpion (1957). Rivas played Chingachgook in The Deerslayer (1957), with Lex Barker, Forrest Tucker, and Rita Moreno. In 1969, Rivas co-founded, with Ricardo Montalban and Henry Darrow, Nostroso, a Los Angeles based organization devoted to improving the way Hispanics are depicted in entertainmsent.

A poster for George Cukor’s 1933 drama ‘Little Women’ starring Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Jean Parker, and Frances Dee. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

Douglass Montgomery was born in 1907 in Los Angeles. He began his career in Hollywood films of the 1930’s notably “Little Women” opposite Katherine Hepburn in 1933. In the 1940’s he went to the United Kingdom where he made many fine films especially “The Way to the Stars” in 1945. He died on the 23rd of July 1966 on the same day as another great Hollywood actor called Montgomery died – Montgomery Clift.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Montgomery, on stage by his teens, was scouted by MGM. The studio changed his name to Kent Douglass and cast him in dashing or romantic roles opposite some of MGM’s powerhouse actresses, such as Joan Crawford (in Paid (1930) ) and Katharine Hepburn (inLittle Women (1933), in which he played the role of Laurie).

Just as he was gaining ground, MGM inexplicably changed his name again, to Douglass Montgomery, and lent him to other studios. Although he forged ahead with Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), Harmony Lane (1935) (in which he portrayed composer Stephen “Suwanee River” Foster), and Bob Hope’s comedy classic The Cat and the Canary (1939), his career was in decline by WWII. He enlisted with the Canadian infantry and served for four years. Montgomery returned to acting but was scarcely noticed. He starred in a few routine British films, then returned to the US for a few more and for some work in television. He died in 1966.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

TCM overview:

jessgalchutt ( 2006-12-05 )

Source: www.imdb.com

A strapping young man with chiseled, handsome looks and a naive, innocent demeanor, this actor’s career might just have been hampered by a change of screen names. Actor Douglass Montgomery was born Robert Douglass Montgomery in 1907. On stage in his teens, MGM scouts nabbed him, signed him up, and changed his name to Kent Douglass for films in 1930. With a suitably dashing and romantic presence similar to that of Leslie Howard, the fair-haired young man played second leads opposite some of MGM’s powerhouse ladies, including Joan Crawford in Paid (1930) and Katharine Hepburn in Little Women (1933) in which he played the role of Laurie. Just as he was making grounds, his moniker was inexplicably changed to Douglass Montgomery, and he was loaned out to other studios. Although he forged ahead with Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), Harmony Lane (1935) , in which he portrayed composer Stephen “Suwanee River” Foster, and Bob Hope’s comedy classic The Cat and the Canary (1939), by WWII, his career had waned. He enlisted with the Canadian infantry, serving for four years. Montgomery returned but was scarcely noticed. He starred in a few routine British films following this period, then returned to the US for a couple more and some TV work. He died in 1966.

The above TCM overview can be accessed online here.

Peggy O’Neil was born in New York in 1894 and died in London in 1960. Her film career was based mainly in the U.S. and her stage career in Britain.

1736128 Ma soeur est du tonnerre My Sister Eileen de Richard Quine avec Janet Leigh Jack Lemmon et Betty Garrett 1955; (add.info.: Ma soeur est du tonnerre My Sister Eileen de Richard Quine avec Janet Leigh Jack Lemmon et Betty Garrett 1955).

Jack Lemmon was born in 1925 in Newton, Massachusetts. He has had one of the popular and prolific career that any Hollywood actor could wish for. He began by playing callow young men opposite such powerhouse ladies as Betty Grable and Judy Holliday. By the late 1950’s he had developed into a sterling comedic actor starring in such movies as “Some Like It Hot” with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis in 1959 and “The Apartment” with Shirley MacLaine in 1960. He won two Oscars, for “Mr Roberts” in 1955 and “Save the Tiger” in 1973. He starred opposite some of the most iconic leading ladies of the 60’s and 70’s including Doris Day, Romy Schneider, Anne Bancroft and Jane Fonda. He died in 2001. His widow is the actress Felicia Farr.

Duncan Campbell’s obituary of Jack Lemmon in “The Guardian”:

The world of entertainment and millions of fans were yesterday mourning and paying tribute to Jack Lemmon, who died in a Los Angeles hospital following complications related to cancer. The star of Some Like It Hot, The Odd Couple and Missing, and the winner of two Oscars, was 76.

His wife, Felicia, his two children and his step-daughter were at his bedside when he died. He had been in and out of the University of Southern California/ Norris Cancer Clinic in Boyle Heights during the last few months as his condition deteriorated. He underwent surgery a month ago to remove an inflamed gall bladder. Although he died on Wednesday night, news of his death was not made public until early yesterday.

“He is one of the greatest actors in the history of the business,” said his publicist and longtime spokesman, Warren Cowen. “To say one word about him would be ‘beautiful.’ It’s an opinion that is shared by everybody who knew him.”

His death comes almost exactly a year after his old friend and partner in The Odd Couple, Walter Mathau, died of a heart attack. “Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon,” is how the director Billy Wilder once described him.

“What marks all the best work Lemmon has done are some trace elements of the man himself, some perceived truth that as clown or tragic figure, the persona within the character is likable, decent, intelligent, vulnerable, worth knowing; disorganised possibly, flawed almost certainly, but forever worth knowing,” was the assessment of the Los Angeles Times film writer, Charles Champlin.

In 1999, he performed in the television drama Tuesdays With Morrie, for which he won an Emmy and in which he had an opportunity through his role to reflect on death. He was already ill with cancer.

Enormous range

While he may be best remembered for his roles as the musician who had to dress in drag to escape the mob in Some Like It Hot, and as Felix Unger in The Odd Couple, Lemmon’s range was enormous. Whether playing the distraught father of a son missing during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile in the film Missing, or an alcoholic in The Days of Wine and Roses, or a speedy newspaper man in The Front Page, he managed to bring something different to the role.

Although regarded as one of the great comic actors in the history of film, five of his seven Oscar nominations were for roles in dramas rather than comedies.

Born in 1925 in a lift in a hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, legend had it that he had a case of jaundice which prompted a nurse to remark: “My, look at the little yellow Lemmon.” John Uhler Lemmon III was the son of the owner of a bakery who suffered from childhood illnesses and required 13 operations before he was 13.

After studying at Harvard and serving in the US navy as an ensign in the second world war, Lemmon embarked on an acting career first in the theatre in New York, then on radio, television and film, that spanned half a century. He even managed to resist pressure from the legendary studio boss, Harry Cohn, who wanted him to change his name lest critics and audiences should ever be tempted to describe the movies he appeared in as “lemons”. He won an academy award for the first time in 1956 for his part as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts, and again in 1973 for playing a compromised businessman in trouble with the mob in Save the Tiger.

Recently, he had been reflecting on his career. Explaining his roles in Missing, The Days of Wine and Roses and The China Syndrome, in which he played a nuclear power plant operator, he said: “I like a film that has a point of view.” He said that it was not necessary for him to agree with a point of view in order to play the part, but that films that made people think always attracted him. But he was philosophical about the movie business: “We all make bad films _ you misjudge. That happens more often than the hits. But I have been able to get films that have worked, not only at the box office, but critically and with the public, often enough so that I’m still around. I can still get wonderful parts, thank God… I am passionate about acting, I love it, respect it. It gets me.” He kept acting and getting parts until near the end.

While Lemmon said he had loved his career and felt privileged to have played so many different parts, he said that his career was always much less important to him than his family. He was married from 1950 to 1956 to the actress Cynthia Stone, and their son, Chris, was born in1954. In 1962, he married the actress Felicia Farr, and their daughter, Courtney, was born in 1966. His family said yesterday that his funeral would be private.

His two most rewarding film partnerships were with the director Billy Wilder, who directed Lemmon with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Irma La Douce and The Front Page, and with Walter Mathau, with whom he starred in eight films.

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

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Carroll O’Connor

Fionnula Flanagan

Fionnuala Flanagan.

Martha Hyer

Martha Hyer obituary in “The Guardian” in 2014.

Peter Van Eyck

Peter Van Eyck. TCM Overview.

Mercedes McCambridge

Mercedes McCambridge obituary in “The Guardian” in 2004.

Carlos Rivas

Douglass Montgomery

Peggy O’Neil

Jack Lemmon

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