Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 87 of 108

Zina Bethune

Zina Bethune was born in 1945 in New York City. She was on the Broadway stage in 1960 playing the President’s daughter in “Sunrise Over Campobello”. She was featured in the television series “The Hurses” from 1962 until 1965. She was in Martin Scorsese’s “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” in 1967. She died in 2012.

Her IMDB entry:

Lovely, lithe and light-haired Zina Bethune, noted ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher, also had a promising acting career during the late 1950s and 1960s. The native New Yorker was born on February 17, 1945, the daughter of William Charles Bethune (who died in 1950 when Zina was 5) and established actress Ivy Bethune (née Vigner) ofGeneral Hospital (1963) fame. Formally trained in dance from age 6, she was a student at George Balanchine‘s School of American Ballet, and performed with the New York City Ballet as a teen despite the fact she was diagnosed at various times with scoliosis, lymphedema and hip dysplasia.

As an adolescent, she appeared in several daytime TV dramas, including a breakthrough part (1956-1958) as the first “Robin Lang” on the serial Guiding Light (1952). Over time, she joined the cast of other soaps, including a lengthy running part on Love of Life(1951) from 1965-1971 and, many years later, a recurring part on Santa Barbara (1984). Zina co-starred with Shirl Conway on the TV drama The Doctors and the Nurses (1962) [best known as “The Nurses,” the series was later entitled “The Doctors and the Nurses”], and won touching reviews for her naive student nurse role. She also played the sensitive role of “Amy” in one of several TV adaptations of Louisa May Alcott‘s belovedLittle Women (1958). As a young adult, she continued to demonstrate a formidable dramatic flair on such popular shows as Route 66 (1960), Naked City (1958), Gunsmoke(1955), Lancer (1968), The Invaders (1967), Emergency! (1972) and CHiPs (1977).

Making her first movie appearance as one of the Roosevelt children in Sunrise at Campobello (1960) starring Ralph Bellamy and Greer Garson, she did not make as indelible a mark in film as promised, but did earn semi-cult notice for her moving streetwise role opposite Harvey Keitel in Martin Scorsese‘s autobiographical feature-length debut Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967) [aka Who’s That Knocking at My Door?], a notable predecessor to his acclaimed star-maker Mean Streets (1973).

Zina graced many musicals as a singer/dancer and made her Broadway debut at age 11 playing “Tessie” in “The Most Happy Fella”. A number of touring productions came her way in the form of “Sweet Charity”, “Oklahoma!”, “Damn Yankees!”, “Carnival”, “Carousel” and “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”. Non-musical offerings came in the form of “The Member of the Wedding”, “Barefoot in the Park” and “The Owl and the Pussycat”. In 1992, Zina returned to Broadway as a replacement in “Grand Hotel” in which she portrayed Russian ballerina “Elizaveta Grushinskaya”.

Ms. Bethune’s ultimate passion and commitment, however, has remained in the art of dance…and on many levels. In her prime, she was a highly-regarded prima ballerina. Among her many credits were “Swan Lake”, “Le Corsair”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Black Swan”, “Giselle”, “Don Quixote” and “Sleeping Beauty”, not to mention Balanchine’s own “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux”. A guest artist with The Royal Danish Ballet, Nevada Dance Theatre and San Francisco Ballet Theatre, she went on to form her own New York-based company in 1969 — Zina Bethune and Company. Her career as a dance director and choreographer has encompassed over 50 plays, films, videos and ballets.

Throughout her life, she has remained steadfast in her contribution to children with physical and mental disabilities. Helping them embrace the art of dance as a means of self-expression and therapy, she was prompted by her own physical ailments diagnosed while growing up. In addition to the Theatredance performance company she founded in 1980, she also organized Dance Outreach (now known as Infinite Dreams) in 1982, which continues to enroll disabled young children in dance-related activities throughout Southern California.

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

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Zina Bethune (1945–2012) was a rare “triple threat” whose career spanned the heights of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, the grit of New Hollywood cinema, and a pioneering legacy in disability arts.

While many remember her as a child star or a Scorsese leading lady, a critical analysis of her work reveals a woman who used her technical discipline as a dancer to ground her naturalistic acting, and later, used her own physical struggles to redefine accessibility in the performing arts.

I. Career Overview: The Three Acts

Act 1: The Prodigy (1950s–1960s)

Bethune began her career at age six. A student of George Balanchine at the School of American Ballet, she was dancing as Clara in The Nutcracker by age 14. Simultaneously, she became a fixture of “Golden Age” television, starring as the original Robin Lang on The Guiding Light and earning critical acclaim for her role as Gail Lucas in the medical drama The Nurses (1962–1965).

Act 2: The Scorsese Muse & Broadway (1967–1990s)

In 1967, she starred as “The Girl” opposite Harvey Keitel in Martin Scorsese’s feature debut, Who’s That Knocking at My Door. This role remains her most analyzed film work. She balanced this with high-profile Broadway and touring roles in Most Happy Fella, Grand Hotel, and Sweet Charity.

Act 3: The Pioneer (1980–2012)

Battling scoliosis, lymphedema, and hip dysplasia—conditions doctors said should have ended her dance career—Bethune founded Theatre Bethune (formerly Bethune Theatredanse) and Infinite Dreams. These were among the first professional companies to integrate dancers with disabilities into mainstream performance.

II. Critical Analysis of Her Work

The “Scorsese Girl”: A Study in Naturalism

In Who’s That Knocking at My Door, Bethune provides a vital counterpoint to Harvey Keitel’s hyper-masculine, guilt-ridden protagonist.

The Contrast: Critics often note that while Keitel represents the “old world” of Italian-American street life, Bethune’s character represents the “new world”—literate, independent, and modern.
Performance Style: Her performance is characterized by a “quiet weight.” In the film’s climactic revelation of trauma, Bethune avoids melodrama, opting instead for a haunting, still realism. This stillness was a direct byproduct of her ballet training—a controlled physical presence that allowed her to hold the screen against more erratic, “Method-style” actors.

The Professionalism of “The Nurses”

In The Nurses, Bethune’s Gail Lucas was revolutionary for the time. Unlike the romanticized “angel of mercy” tropes common in 1960s TV, Bethune portrayed the technical and emotional exhaustion of medical work. Her performance was noted for its technical precision; she approached the “acting” of nursing with the same rigor she applied to a pas de deux, lending the show an early sense of procedural realism.

Artistic Legacy: The Body as a Political Statement

Perhaps the most “critical” aspect of her work wasn’t a single role, but her defiance of the “perfect” balletic form.

Deconstructing the Aesthetic: By performing as a prima ballerina while managing significant physical disabilities, Bethune challenged the elitist aesthetic of the 20th-century dance world.
Multimedia Innovation: Her later work with Theatre Bethune was a pioneer in Cyber-Art, using visual effects and technology to allow performers with limited mobility to engage in large-scale choreography.

III. Key Filmography & Stage Credits

Work	Medium	Role	Significance
The Nutcracker (1954)	Dance	Clara	Original Balanchine production.
Sunrise at Campobello(1960)	Film	Anna Roosevelt	Her transition from TV to major motion pictures.
The Nurses (1962–65)	TV	Gail Lucas	Established her as a major television star.
Who’s That Knocking…(1967)	Film	“The Girl”	Pivotal role in the birth of New Hollywood.
Grand Hotel (1992)	Broadway	Elizaveta Grushinskaya	A “meta” role playing an aging Russian ballerina.

Final Reflection

Zina Bethune’s career ended tragically in 2012 when she was struck by a car while trying to assist an injured animal. Her legacy is defined by resilience. Whether she was navigating the experimental lens of a young Scorsese or teaching a child in a wheelchair to “dance” through light and sound, she viewed the human body not as a limitation, but as a medium for radical empathy.

Patrice Munsel was born in 1925 in Spokane, Washington. She had a brilliant career in opera with just the occasional film e.g. “Melba” in 1953. She died in 2016.

Her IMDB entry:

Patrice Munsel was born on May 14, 1925 in Spokane, Washington, USA as Patrice Beverly Munsil. She is an actress, known for The Patrice Munsel Show (1956), Max Liebman Presents: Naughty Marietta (1955) and Melba (1953). She was previously married to Robert Schuler.)

Mother of Rhett Schuler, Heidi Schuler, Scott Schuler and Nicole Schuler.

American coloratura soprano, the youngest singer/soubrette who ever starred at the Metropolitan Opera. Following along the path of Lily Pons, she made her official Met debut on December 4, 1943, singing Philine in “Mignon”. Perhaps best known for the saucy role of Adele in “Die Fledermaus”, she performed at the Metropolitan well over 200 times. Trained by legendary voice coach Giacomo Spadoni.

Made only one film. She played the title role of Dame Nellie Melba in the film Melba(1953). She also had her own television series, The Patrice Munsel Show (1956), which ran a season.

In 1958 she ended her career as an opera singer and began to perform in musical comedies and operettas, including such vehicles as “Rose Marie”, “The Merry Widow”, “Song of Norway” and “Kiss Me, Kate”.

Widow of candy heir Robert Schuler, who turned TV producer and produced her own 1950s TV variety series.

Only child of a dentist and an accomplished pianist, her last name was originally spelled “Munsil”.

Studied whistling for seven years with a Spokane whistling teacher, Mrs. Marjorie Clark Kennedy. Her teacher claimed she could have had a real career in whistling and she stuck with it because she did beautiful bird work.

Her first professional job was in her early teens with a small touring opera company that came to Spokane wherein she was given a part in the chorus for the performances of Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci and Carmen.

During the 1950s and ’60s, she was the TV spokesperson for the Camp Fire Girls (now Campfire USA), a non-sectarian youth organization styled along the lines of the Boy and Girl Scouts of America.

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

“New York Times” obituary:

Patrice Munsel, a coloratura soprano who as a teenager became one of the Metropolitan Opera’s youngest stars and later crossed over into television and musical theater, died on Aug. 4 at her home in Schroon Lake, N.Y. She was 91. Her death was confirmed on Wednesday by her daughter Heidi Schuler Bright. Ms. Munsel was 17 when, in March 1943, she won a Met contract and $1,000 after tying for first place in the eighth annual Metropolitan Auditions of the Air, a precursor to the Met’s National Council Auditions, a program to discover promising young opera singers and nurture their careers. (The other first-place winner was Christine Johnson, who originated the role of Nettie Fowler in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel” when it opened on Broadway in 1945.) By November Ms. Munsel had signed a three-year contract with the impresario Sol Hurok for a guaranteed $120,000. On Dec. 4, at 18, she made her Met debut as the temptress Philine in Ambroise Thomas’s “Mignon,” wearing a good-luck ring and a crown lent to her by the soprano Lily Pons.

The audience gave Ms. Munsel a standing ovation of several minutes. The critics were generally less kind. “For this part her voice is neither sufficiently big, or developed, or brilliant enough,” the critic Olin Downes wrote in The New York Times. “In plain words,” he said, “she was cruelly miscast, in this, one of the most exacting roles in the coloratura soprano’s repertory.” More than 40 years later, in a Los Angeles Times interview, Ms. Munsel said simply, “I didn’t have a clue as to what the part was about.” She performed a total of 225 times at the Met, excelling as the maid Adele in Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus” and earning praise from Downes for her “virtuoso singing” and “very amusing acting.” He declared her born for the role “by personality, wit, temperament.” Rudolf Bing, the company’s general manager during Ms. Munsel’s tenure, is said to have called her “a superb soubrette.”

But Ms. Munsel had given up touring the moment she became engaged to Robert C. Schuler, an adman turned television producer, whom she married in 1952. Not long after returning from their summer-long European honeymoon, she did a star turn on movie screens as Dame Nellie Melba, the 19th-century Australian soprano, in the 1953 biopic “Melba,” produced by the Hollywood legend Sam Spiegel. From there, she strutted her way into the Las Vegas nightclub scene, peeling off a voluminous silk skirt mid-aria at the New Frontier in 1955 to reveal a halter and bejeweled pink capris. Two years later, Ms. Munsel embarked on a television career with “The Patrice Munsel Show,” a variety series on ABC, joining guests like Eddie Albert, Andy Williams, Tony Bennett and John Raitt in a mix of light opera and pop, though she admitted to hating “double-entendre lyrics.” It was canceled after one season.

Ms. Munsel last performed at the Met in 1958 as Mimi in “La Bohème,” a role she had long coveted. She then focused on motherhood, traveling and musical comedies, performing splits in the 1965 Lincoln Center Theater presentation of “The Merry Widow” and occasionally turning productions of “The Sound of Music” and “The King and I” into family affairs with her four children. Besides her daughter Heidi, two other children survive: another daughter, Nicole Schuler, and a son, Scott Schuler, as well as two grandsons and two great-granddaughters. Her husband, who in 2005 chronicled his 50-year marriage to Ms. Munsel in the book “The Diva & I: My Life with Metropolitan Opera Star Patrice Munsel,” died in 2007. Their son Rhett Carroll Schuler died in 2005.

Patrice Beverly Munsil was born on May 14, 1925, in Spokane, Wash. (She later changed the spelling of her surname to Munsel at the Metropolitan Opera’s request.) Her father, Dr. Audley J. Munsil, was a dental surgeon; her mother, Eunice Munsil, was a homemaker and an accomplished piano player.

Ms. Munsel had a lifelong comedic streak. “I’m sure when I emerged from my mother’s womb, the doctor slapped me, I hit a high C and slapped him back,” she wrote in a biographical sketch on her website.

She began studying ballet and tap at 6 and soon, inspired by Walt Disney, decided that she wanted to be a professional whistler. “There were always birds whistling in the background” of films like “Cinderella” and “Snow White,” she explained, “so I decided to whistle my way to Hollywood.”

Her parents, eager to encourage any and all of her artistic aspirations, managed to find her a whistling teacher.

Phil Carey was born in 1925 in New Jersey. He served with the U.S. military in World War Two and again during the Korean War. His film appearances include “This Woman Is Dangerous” with Joan Crawford in 1952, “Calamity Jane” with Doris Day and “Pushover” with Kim Novak. On television he featured in the series “Laredo”. Phil Carey died in 2009 at the age of 83.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Tall, blond and of rugged proportions, handsome actor Philip Carey started out as a standard 1950s film actor in westerns, war stories and crime yarns but didn’t achieve full-fledged stardom until well past age 50 when he joined the daytime line-up as ornery Texas tycoon Asa Buchanan on the popular soap One Life to Live (1968) in 1979. He lived pretty much out of the saddle after that, enjoying the patriarchal role for nearly three decades.

He was born with the rather unrugged name of Eugene Carey on July 15, 1925, in Hackensack, New Jersey. Growing up on Long Island, he served with the Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War. He attended (briefly) New York’s Mohawk University and studied drama at the University of Miami where he met his college sweetheart, Maureen Peppler. They married in 1949 and went on to have three children: Linda, Jeffrey and Lisa Ann.

The 6’4″ actor impressed a talent scout with his brawny good looks while appearing in the summer stock play “Over 21” in New England, and he was offered a contract with Warner Bros as a result. Billed as Philip Carey, he didn’t waste any time toiling in bit parts, making his film debut billed fifth in the John Wayne submarine war dramaOperation Pacific (1951). Phil could cut a good figure in military regalia and also showed strong stuff in film noir. A most capable co-star, he tended to be upstaged, however, by either a stronger name female or male star or by the action at hand. He was paired up with Frank Lovejoy in the McCarthy-era I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), and Steve Cochran in the prison tale Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951). Warner Bros. starJoan Crawford was practically the whole movie in the film noir This Woman Is Dangerous(1952) co-starring the equally overlooked David Brian and Dennis Morgan; Calamity Jane(1953) was a vehicle for Doris Day; and he donned his familiar cavalry duds in the background of Gary Cooper in the Civil War western Springfield Rifle (1952).

In 1953, Carey left Warner Bros. and signed up with Columbia Pictures where he was, more than not, billed as “Phil Carey.” Here again he fell into the rather non-descript rugged mold as the stoic soldier or stolid police captain. He did find plenty of work, however, and was frequently top-billed. He battled the Sioux in The Nebraskan (1953); played a former subordinate member of the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid gang who has to clear his name in Wyoming Renegades (1954); was a brute force to be reckoned with in They Rode West (1954); and had one of his standard movie roles (as an officer) in a better quality movie, Columbia’s Pushover (1954), which spent more time promoting the debut of its starlet Kim Novak as the new Marilyn Monroe. Overshadowed by James Cagney and Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts (1955) and by Van Heflin, youngJoanne Woodward (in her movie debut) and villain Raymond Burr in the western Count Three and Pray (1955), Phil turned his durable talents more and more to TV in the late 1950s.

The man of action took on the role of Canadian-born Lt. Michael Rhodes on the seriesTales of the 77th Bengal Lancers (1956) alongside Warren Stevens. He eventually left Columbia studios to do a stint (albeit relatively short) playing Raymond Chandler‘s unflappable detective Philip Marlowe (1959). Most of the 60s and 70s, other than a few now-forgotten film adventures such as Black Gold (1962), The Great Sioux Massacre(1965) and Three Guns for Texas (1968), were spent either saddling up as a guest star on The Rifleman (1958), Bronco (1958), The Virginian (1962) and Gunsmoke (1955) or hard-nosing it on such crime series as 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Ironside (1967), McCloud(1970), Banacek (1972) and Felony Squad (1966). He also played the regular role of a stern captain in the Texas Rangers western series Laredo (1965).

Phil was a spokesperson for Granny Goose potato chips commercials, and his deep voice served him well for many seasons as narrator of the nature documentary series Untamed Frontier (1967). One of his best-remembered TV guest appearances, however, was a change-of-pace role on the comedy All in the Family (1971) in which he played a vital, strapping blue-collar pal of Archie Bunker’s whose manly man just happened to be a proud, astereotypical homosexual. His hilarious confrontational scene with a dumbfounded Archie in Kelsey’s bar remains a classic.

Phil’s brief regular role in the daytime soap Bright Promise (1969) in 1972 was just a practice drill for the regular role he would play in 1979 as Texas oilman Asa Buchanan inOne Life to Live (1968). His popularity soared as the moneybags manipulator you loved to hate. Residing in Manhattan for quite some time as a result of the New York-based show, he played the role for close to three decades until diagnosed with lung cancer in January of 2006. Forced to undergo chemotherapy, he officially left the serial altogether in May of 2007, and his character “died” peacefully off-screen a few months later.

Divorced from his first wife, Phil married a much younger lady, Colleen Welch, in 1976 and had two children by her — daughter Shannon (born 1980) and son Sean (born 1983). Phil lost his battle with cancer on February 6, 2009, at the age of 83.

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

ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, US poster, from left: Eddie Albert, Ike Eisenmann, Kim Richards, Ray Milland (top), 1975

Eddie Albert was born in Rock Island, Illinois in 1906. He is known primarily to-day for the very popular television series “Green Acres” with Eva Gabor. His films include “Brother Rat” and “Roman Holiday” with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. He died in 2005 aged 99. He was married to Mexican actress Margo ans their son was actor Edward Albert.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Independent”

Was there a more likable guy in the movies than Eddie Albert, who has died aged 97? Not conventionally handsome he had a broad, dimpled smile and was generally cast as a friendly innocent or the hero’s good-natured sidekick. If that were all, then Albert would fall into the minor supporting actor category.

But Eddie Albert had a wide-ranging career that included the stage, television, documentaries and personal crusades. Although seldom called upon to act with any depth in the movies, he gave an extraordinary performance as the cowardly army officer in Robert Aldrich’s Attack! (1956).

He also had a pleasant singing voice that enabled him to star on Broadway in The Boys From Syracuse, in which he introduced the Rodgers and Hart song This Can’t Be Love to the world, and The Music Man. Owing to the long-running sitcom Green Acres, he had one of the most famous faces on television and he became a leading campaigner in America in the fight to combat pollution and world hunger.

Born Edward Albert Heimberger in Illinois, he left the University of Minnesota to join a song-and-patter group called the Threesome. When the act became a duo (with Grace Bradt) called The Honeymooners on the radio, and reached New York in 1935, he dropped his surname because he kept being called Eddie Hamburger. After making his Broadway debut a year later, Albert had three huge stage successes in a row, all under George Abbott’s direction.

First as the baseball pitching Virginia military cadet in the forces comedy Brother Rat, then as the hapless “playwright from Oswego” in the farce Room Service, and as Antipholus in the The Boys From Syracuse. During the break between the stage shows, he repeated his role of Bing Edwards (third billed after Wayne Morris and Ronald Reagan) in Warner Bros screen version of Brother Rat (1938), which led to a contract from the studio. One of his best moments in the film was as an expectant father practising baby talk on a stranger’s offspring.

The film engendered two films with the same cast, a sequel, Brother Rat And A Baby, and An Angel From Texas (both 1940), in the latter of which, Albert played a greenhorn fast-talked by Morris and Reagan into investing in a show. These films also starred Priscilla Lane, whose doctor husband Albert played in Four Wives (1939) and Four Mothers (1941). In On Your Toes (1939), an emasculated film version of the Rodgers and Hart musical, he got to (sort-of) dance with ballet dancer Vera Zorina in The Slaughter On 10th Avenue number, and was the lion tamer in a circus run by Humphrey Bogart in The Wagons Roll At Night (1941) of which the New York Times wrote: “Except for the lions and Mr Albert, the film is honky-tonk”.

In Out Of The Fog (I941), Albert played the first of several dullish characters who lose their girlfriends to more charismatic men; in this case Ida Lupino leaves him for gangster John Garfield. A few years later he lost Loretta Young to David Niven in The Perfect Marriage (1946), and Jennifer Jones to Laurence Olivier in Carrie (1952).

In 1942, Albert joined the navy, serving in the Pacific. He returned to the US as a lieutenant and was assigned to training films branch. On the day of his discharge, he married the Mexican film actress Margo, née Maria Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estella Bolado Castilia y O’Donnell.

Now freelance, Albert produced and narrated a series of 16mm educational two-reelers, including sex education films, while appearing in a variety of second-string movie roles, though he got to sing for the first time on screen in Hit Parade (1947). Two years later, he returned to Broadway in the Irving Berlin musical Miss Liberty, which ran almost a year.

Despite being Oscar-nominated for best supporting actor for the first time in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953) – he played Gregory Peck’s extrovert, bearded photographer pal – his film parts barely improved. Ironically, as the Persian pedlar Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! (1955),he was the only lead in the film not to have a number. (Even Rod Steiger sang)

Then came Attack!, Robert Aldrich’s powerful film of men in war. “Bob gave me the best role I’ve had in my career,” Albert claimed. “He knew more about the theme of conflict than any director I’ve known.” As the craven army officer, who sends a small platoon behind enemy lines, stranding them without cover, Albert turned his amiable persona inside out, and his portrayal of the man’s mental breakdown was film acting at its naked best. Unfortunately, he had to wait 18 years for almost as challenging a role when Robert Aldrich cast him as the sadistic prison warden (with Nixon characteristics) in The Longest Yard (1974).

In between, an easy-going Albert was seen in The Teahouse Of The August Moon (1956) as the army psychiatrist who is sent to Okinawan village to help Glenn Ford, but ends up going native; as an expatriate American in Pamplona, who is drunk most of the time, and runs the bulls (with an equally inebriated Errol Flynn) in The Sun Also Rises (1957) and as the grinning heavy in The Gun Runners (1958), another Hemingway adaptation (from To Have And Have Not).

In 1960, Albert successfully took over from Robert Preston in the showy role of the conman in The Music Man on Broadway. But his biggest success in the 1960s was the TV sitcom Green Acres, in which he played a big city lawyer who fulfils a lifelong dream of becoming a farmer and drags his glamorous wife (Eva Gabor) to the broken down rural nightmare he has bought.

Among his better parts in films of the period were as the only man among missionaries in China in John Ford’s final film, Seven Women (1966), and the wealthy father of snobbish Cybill Shepherd in The Heartbreak Kid (I972). His nonplussed reaction to nebbish Charles Grodin’s asking for his daughter’s hand, although Grodin is on his honeymoon with another, was worth the Oscar nomination he received. Aldrich again exploited Albert’s dark side in Hustle (1975), in which he was appropriately slimy as a corrupt lawyer involved in a call-girl racket.

In the same year, he starred in another TV series called Switch as a tough ex-cop in the private eye business with ex-con Robert Wagner. But the role Eddie Albert enjoyed most in life, other than as husband to Margo (who died in 1985), and father of the actor Edward Albert and adopted daughter Maria (both of whom survive him), was as a supporter of agronomy around the world to combat hunger. In fact, in 1986, he was given a presidential citation for his work in that field. As long ago as the 1950s, he had visited the Congo to discuss malnutrition with Albert Schweitzer.

Once referred to by an interviewer in 1970 as an ecologist, Albert retorted: “Ecologist, hell! Too mild a word. Check the department of agriculture – 60% of the world is hungry already. With our soil impoverished, our air poisoned, our wildlife crippled by DDT, our rivers and lakes turning into giant cesspools, and mass starvation an apparent inevitability by 1976, I call myself a human survivalist!” About his dire prognostications, Albert commented: “I went around scaring the hell out of a lot of people.” Something he hardly ever did on screen.

· Eddie Albert, actor, born April 22 1908; died May 26 2005

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

Gig Young was born in 1913 in Minnesota. In 1942 he was featured in the Warner Bros film “The Gay Sisters” with Barbara Stanwyck, In many of his films he was the breezy friend of the leading actor e.g. “Young at Heart”, “Teacher’s Pet” and “Ask Any Girl”. In 1969 he won an Oscar for his performance in “They Shoot Horses Don’t They”. Gig Young died in 1978.

IMDB entry:

Affable, immensely likable American actor, usually in second leads. A native of Minnesota, his parents John and Emma Barr raised him in Washington, DC. He developed a passion for the theatre while appearing in high school plays. After some amateur experience, he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in “Pancho”, a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he and the leading actor in the play, George Reeves, were spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout. Both actors were signed supporting player contracts with the studio. Still acting under his given name, Byron Barr, he played bits and extra roles. He experimented with varying screen names because of another actor with the same name (see Byron Barr). In 1942, in the picture The Gay Sisters (1942), he was given the role of a character with the name Gig Young and thereafter adopted the name as his own. He had been supplementing his income working in a gasoline station, but The Gay Sisters (1942) gave him a career boost. Although service with the Coast Guard interrupted his ascension, he returned from the war and soon established himself as a reliable player of light leading men roles, usually secondarily to bigger stars. A dramatic part in Come Fill the Cup (1951) won him a nomination for the best supporting actor Oscar, a feat he repeated seven years later in a comedic role in Teacher’s Pet (1958). A prolific television career complemented his film work. In 1969, his surprisingly seedy portrayal of a dance-marathon emcee in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) finally won him the Oscar. A succession of marriages, including one to actress Elizabeth Montgomery, failed. In 1978, three weeks after marrying German actress Kim Schmidt, Young apparently shot her to death in their New York City apartment and then turned the gun on himself. The direct cause of the murder-suicide remains unclear. Young was not quite 65, his bride 21.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

The above IMB entry can also be accessed online here.

Molly Lamont was born in 1910 in South Africa. She began her career in British films and her debut was in 1930 in “The Black Hand Gang”. In 1936 she went to Hollywood and the remainder of her career was in the U.S. Her films include “The Awful Truth” with Cary Grant and “The White Cliffs of Dover” in 1944. She died in 2001.

TCM Overview:

Throughout her entertainment career as an accomplished actress, Molly Lamont graced the silver screen many times. In her early acting career, Lamont appeared in such films as the Katharine Hepburn dramatic adaptation “Mary of Scotland” (1936), “The Jungle Princess” (1936) with Dorothy Lamour and “A Doctor’s Diary” (1937). She also appeared in the comedic adaptation “The Awful Truth” (1937) with Irene Dunne, “The Moon and Sixpence” (1942) and the George Raft musical “Follow the Boys” (1944). Her passion for acting continued to her roles in projects like “Minstrel Man” (1944) with Benny Fields, the Bette Davis drama “Mr. Skeffington” (1945) and “The Suspect” (1945). She also appeared in the Rosemary LaPlanche horror film “Devil Bat’s Daughter” (1946) and “The Dark Corner” (1946). Toward the end of her career, she tackled roles in “Christmas Eve” (1947), the drama “Ivy” (1947) with Joan Fontaine and the Bela Lugosi thriller “Scared to Death” (1947). She also appeared in “South Sea Sinner” (1950). Lamont was most recently credited in “Raising Hope” (Fox, 2010-14). She also worked in television during these years, including a part on “Modern Family” (ABC, 2009-). Lamont passed away in July 2001 at the age of 91.

The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.

L.Q. Jones was born in 1927 in Beaumont, Texas. He is well known for his work in the films of Sam Peckinpah. These iclude “Ride the High Country” in 1962, “Major Dundee”, “The Wild Bunch”, “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” and “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”.

IMDB entry:

Tall, sandy haired, mustachioed actor from Texas born Justus McQueen, who adopted the name of the character he portrayed in his first film, Battle Cry (1955). Jones, with his craggy, gaunt looks, first appeared in minor character roles in plenty of WWII films including The Young Lions (1958), The Naked and the Dead (1958), Hell Is for Heroes(1962) and Battle of the Coral Sea (1959). However, 1962 saw him team up with maverick director Sam Peckinpah for the first of Jones’ five appearances in his films. Ride the High Country (1962) saw Jones play one of the lowlife Hammond brothers. Next he appeared alongside Charlton Heston in Major Dundee (1965), then Peckinpah cast him, along with his real-life friend Strother Martin, as one of the scummy, murderous bounty hunters in The Wild Bunch (1969). Such was the chemistry between Jones and Martin that Peckinpah teamed them again the following year in The Ballad of Cable Hogue(1970), and Jones’ final appearance in a Peckinpah film was in another western, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). Two years later Jones directed the cult post-apocalyptic film A Boy and His Dog (1975) starring a young Don Johnson. He has continued to work in Hollywood, and as the lines on his craggy face have deepened, he turns up more frequently as crusty old westerners, especially in multiple TV guest spots. He turned in an interesting performance as a seemingly good ol’ boy Nevada cowboy who was actually a powerful behind-the-scenes player in state politics who leaned on Robert De Niro‘s Las Vegas mob gambler in Martin Scorsese‘s violent and powerful Casino (1995).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: firehouse44

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

New York Times obituary:

By Sam Roberts

July 15, 2022

L.Q. Jones, a hirsute, craggy-faced, swaggering Texan who guilelessly played the antihero in some 60 films and dozens of television series, died on Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his grandson Erté deGarces.

A former stand-up comic, Mr. Jones also tried his hand as a bean, corn and dairy rancher in Nicaragua and once described himself as “but several hours away from three degrees — one in law, one in business, one in journalism” at the University of Texas.

But he was lured to the Warner Bros. studios when a college roommate, Fess Parker, the actor who later played both Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, persuaded him to audition for a minor role in the 1955 film “Battle Cry,” directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted from Leon Uris’s novel.

Mr. Parker sent him a copy of the book and a map with directions to the Warner lot. Mr. Jones was cast in two days.

Billed as Justus E. McQueen (his birth name), he made his first appearance onscreen as the movie’s narrator introduced a group of all-American Marine recruits being shipped by train to boot camp. The camera then panned to a character named L.Q. Jones.

“Then, abruptly, the narrator’s voice drops to the scornful tone of a 10th-grade math teacher doling out detention,” Justin Humphreys wrote in “Names You Never Remember, With Faces You Never Forget” (2006).

“‘There’s one in every group,’ he tells us, as we see L.Q. mischievously giving one of the other soldiers-to-be a hotfoot,” Mr. Humphrey added. “There could have been no more perfect beginning to L.Q. Jones’s career in the movies. The word that best sums up his overriding screen persona is hellion.”

The actor pirated the character’s name for his own subsequent screen credits. From then on, Justus McQueen was L.Q. Jones.

Mr. Jones joined the director Sam Peckinpah’s stable of actors, appearing in “Ride the High Country” (1962), “Major Dundee” (1965) and “The Wild Bunch” (1969), in which he and his fellow character actor Strother Martin play rival bounty hunters and, as the studio described their manic competition for the highest body count, “bring their depraved characters to life with a childish energy.”

Mr. Jones was also frequently seen in the stampede of westerns that arrived on TV in the 1950s and ’60s, including “Cheyenne,” “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train” and “Rawhide.” His films included the 1968 westerns “Hang ’em High,” in which he slipped a noose around Clint Eastwood’s neck, and “Stay Away, Joe,” with Elvis Presley. Among his other screen credits were Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” (1995) and Robert Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), his last film.

Mr. Jones directed, produced and helped write “A Boy and His Dog” (1975), a dark post-apocalyptic comedy starring Don Johnson and Jason Robards, based on the book of the same name by Harlan Ellison.

“‘A Boy and His Dog,’ a fantasy about the world after a future holocaust, is, more or less, a beginner’s movie. It has some good ideas and some terrible ones,” Richard Eder wrote in his New York Times review.

“This is the second film directed by L.Q. Jones, better known as an actor,” Mr. Eder continued. “It is not really a success, but I hope he goes on directing.”

He didn’t. “A Boy and His Dog” acquired a cult following, but Mr. Jones returned to what he did best. He preferred the independence of choosing the villainous roles that appealed to him, and that measured his success, to the prospect of directing someone else’s script and wrangling larger-than-life egos.

“Different parts call for different heavies,” Mr. Jones told William R. Horner for his book “Bad at the Bijou” (1982).

“I have a certain presence,” he explained. “I play against that presence a lot of times, and that’s of a heavy that is not crazy or deranged — although we play those, of course — but rather someone who is a heavy because he enjoys being a heavy.”

“It’s really hard to say what they’re looking for when they pick me,” Mr. Jones said. “A lot of times your heavy is not that well presented in the script. Most times he’s too one-sided. So we look for things to bring to being a heavy: a certain softness; a vulnerability that makes him human; a quiet moment when he’s a screamer most of the time; a look; the way he dresses; the way he walks into a room.”

Mr. Jones was born Justus Ellis McQueen Jr. on Aug. 19, 1927, in Beaumont, Texas. His father was a railroad worker; his mother, Jessie Paralee (Stephens) McQueen, died in a car accident when he was a child. He learned to ride a horse when he was 8.

After graduating from high school, he served in the Navy, attended Lamar Junior College and Lon Morris College in Texas, and briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin.

His marriage to Sue Lewis ended in divorce. In addition to his grandson, his survivors include his sons, Randy McQueen and Steve Marshall, and his daughter, Mindy McQueen.

Mr. Jones seemed to measure success less by his bank account (he once described himself as “independently poor”) than by professional gratification. But he had a sense of humor about it.

“I’m around somewhere, probably just counting my money,” the message on his telephone answering machine said. “When I get through, if I’m not too tired, I’ll return your call

Mickey Rooney was born in n1920 in Brooklyn, New York. As a child actor he acted under the name Mickey McGuire. By the late 1930’s he acted as Mickey Rooney and had a contract with MGM where he made many musicals with Judy Garland and also acted the title role in the Andy Hardy series. His other films include “Words and Music” in 1948 and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” in 1961. Mickey Rooney died in April 2014.

TCM Overview:

Mickey Rooney was a little man who enjoyed a big career and a larger-than-life persona. Born into a family of vaudeville performers, he was pushed on stage before he could talk and never let up, appearing in hundreds of movies, TV shows, plays, casinos and gossip columns. He had a hunger for life and work that belied his small stature, marrying eight times, earning and losing millions of dollars on several occasions, and seemingly accepting any invitation to perform, whether it was a dinner theater or the Academy Awards. Outliving most of his Golden Age contemporaries, he carved out a unique place in show business history that spanned generations of fans. And even though his career reached its peak in the 1930s with his onscreen partnership with Judy Garland, he continued to win awards and accolades until his death on April 6, 2014.

Mickey Rooney was born Joseph Yule, Jr. on Sept. 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, NY. His name was plain but his family was colorful. Rooney’s father, Joe Yule, was a Scottish-born vaudeville performer and his mother, Nell, was a chorus girl from Kansas City, MO. Soon after his first birthday Rooney was appearing on stage with his parents and traveling around the country by train. The vagaries of show business did not encourage domestic bliss, leading to Rooney’s parents breaking up in 1924. Nell took custody of her son and, in the grand and often grotesque tradition of frustrated performers, channeled her hopes and dreams into her child. She moved with her son out to California, where she balanced managing a tourist home and overseeing Rooney’s growing career. She was not skilled at either, going broke and moving back and forth between Los Angeles and Kansas City to receive financial help from her family. It was a grim existence until Rooney got his big break playing, ironically, a midget. The movie “Not to Be Trusted” (1926) was not a film classic, but it jump-started Rooney’s career.

Nell used some old fashioned derring-do to land Rooney his next job. Learning that the popular comic strip “Mickey McGuire” was going to be turned into a series of short films, she put her son up for the part. Rooney was still named Joe Yule, Jr. at this point, but Nell offered to legally change his name to Mickey McGuire so that the producers of the films could circumvent paying the writer of the comic strip royalties. This cold-hearted ploy did not work, but Nell still had her son’s name changed to the apparently more marquee-friendly “Mickey Rooney.” Regardless, Rooney got the part and went on to star in dozens of shorts based on the McGuire character, starting with “Mickey’s Circus” (1927). And it truly was a circus, as Rooney worked non-stop for the next 10 years until finally wrapping up the McGuire series with “Mickey’s Derby Day” (1936).

The “Mickey McGuire” movies made Mickey Rooney a star, but his next film series propelled him into the top tier of Hollywood actors. Although he had received good reviews for his work in several features, most notably as Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935), his appearance as Andy Hardy in “A Family Affair” (1937) changed his life forever. Playing the son of Judge James K. Hardy (Lionel Barrymore), Rooney helped MGM’s little B-movie become a monster hit. He played the same role in 13 more homespun “Andy Hardy” films produced between 1937 and 1946, giving venerable MGM one of its most profitable franchises. The early movies were about the entire Hardy clan, but by the fourth film in the series, “Love Finds Andy Hardy” (1938), Rooney’s exuberant personality had pushed his character to the top of the marquee. His portrayal of the all-American boy became an archetype of old-fashioned, Midwestern wholesomeness.

Ironically Andy Hardy’s squeaky-clean image was quite a contrast to the real-life Rooney. As he became more famous, the actor became more reckless, known around Hollywood for his late night carousing and numerous affairs. The most scandalous liaison came to light years later in Rooney’s autobiography, in which he claimed that in 1938, when he was just 18, he had a relationship with the A-list actress Norma Shearer, then 38, and the widow of MGM’s “Boy Wonder” production chief, Irving Thalberg. Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM and a mentor to Thalberg, used his considerable influence to end the affair and keep it from the press. Whether this was out of loyalty to his late protégé or merely a cynical attempt to keep Rooney’s public image more in line with that of Andy Hardy, was impossible to say, but it definitely allowed the actor to continue starring in MGM’s cash cow franchise without any backlash from his adoring fans.

While Rooney’s offscreen romances often got him into trouble, his onscreen relationship with Judy Garland became one of the most famous partnerships in film history. First appearing together in “Love Finds Andy Hardy,” where the then starlet had a guest appearance, they starred together as equals in the musical “Babes in Arms” (1939), directed by the great Busby Berkeley. The movie was a hit and the couple’s chemistry and bright-eyed enthusiasm was real. They became friends and stayed close until her tragic death in 1969. Together they made numerous popular features together, including several more Andy Hardy movies and Busby Berkeley musicals, among them “Strike up the Band” (1940) and “Babes on Broadway” (1941) – most of which were of the “Comon kids, let’s put on a show!” variety.

But Rooney’s popularity was not contingent upon Garland, who shot to worldwide fame playing Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939). Rather, his appeal came from his infectious energy and innate fearlessness as an actor. Whether sharing the screen with giants like Spencer Tracy and Lionel Barrymore in “Captains Courageous” (1937), and again with Tracy in “Boys Town” (1938) – for which Tracy received an Academy Award – Rooney more than held his own. And, of course, the public adored him. From 1939 through 1941, Rooney was the number one box office actor in the United States, as he would proudly continue to remind the world even years later. As America entered World War II, his Andy Hardy films continued to be wildly popular and Rooney worked steadily. He somehow found the time to marry and divorce the gorgeous starlet Ava Gardner (the future Mrs. Frank Sinatra) between 1942 and 1943 before hitting his professional peak opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the horse racing drama, “National Velvet” (1944). But when Rooney was drafted into the military, everything changed.

During WWII, Rooney went to war to entertain the troops, only serving 21 months. But while he did not suffer any physical harm while abroad, when he came home his career was damaged. Post-war America was less innocent than the one that had embraced Andy Hardy. Moreover, Rooney was now 26 years old and thus, a little too long in the tooth to continue playing teenagers. His professional life started a long, slow slide. While he was never at a loss for work, the quality of the material was inferior to his earlier films. To make matters worse his onscreen partnership with Judy Garland came to a close with the musical “Words and Music” (1948). Rooney gamely soldiered on, while his former co-star’s career eclipsed his. Not only because he loved to work but also because he had to. He fit in a few more failed marriages, including one to actress Martha Vickers, while trying to find good parts to pay his alimony. There were bright spots like the Korean War drama “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” (1954), but more often than not Rooney did whatever slop he was offered, including “The Fireball” (1950) and “The Atomic Kid” (1954). Like many movie stars before him whose stars were starting to fade, he turned to television.

“The Mickey Rooney Show” (NBC, 1954-55) – also known as “Hey, Mulligan” – featured Rooney playing a fast-talking teenager. The fact that Rooney, in his mid-30s, was essentially reprising his Andy Hardy character may have had something to do with the show’s cancellation after 39 episodes. Still, it had to be more satisfying work than starring opposite Francis the Talking Mule in “Francis in the Haunted House” (1956). With live television attracting some of the best young directors and writers, Rooney kept returning to the small screen. He scored an artistic triumph and an Emmy nomination in “The Comedian” (1957), an episode of the famous series “Playhouse 90” (CBS, 1956-1961). The late 1950s were the Golden Age of live TV and it gave Rooney’s career a shot in the arm. He continued to work on TV shows like “Alcoa Theater” (NBC, 1957-1960) while landing the occasional film role. He was a natural fit for the film “Baby Face Nelson” (1957), playing a murderous gangster who looks like a choirboy and he (mercifully) put the Andy Hardy series to rest with the feature “Andy Hardy Comes Home” (1958). Finally, in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) he found a role he could sink his teeth into. Unfortunately, they were a set of fake buckteeth that set off the biggest controversy of his career. Blake Edwards, who had worked on Rooney’s TV show as a writer, directed “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” an adaptation of Truman Capote’s novel. The director and actor were close friends, and perhaps this influenced Edwards not reigning in Rooney’s broad performance of a stereotypical, bucktoothed Japanese man. Rooney’s overacting marred an otherwise popular and well-reviewed film, but his sub-par work was the least of his problems.

Rooney’s latest marriage – his fifth – was falling apart during this period. He had married the beauty queen and B-movie actress, Barbara Ann Thomason (a.k.a Carolyn Mitchell), in 1958. While Thomason had put her career on hold to raise the kids, Rooney worked non-stop to support his ex-wives, his gambling habit, and a growing family. He tried directing, but the dismal comedy “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve” (1960) should have stayed private. Hack TV work kept the money rolling in, and there was a cinematic bright spot with his supporting turn in the drama “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (1962), but lightweight fluff like “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini” (1965) was more representative of Rooney’s output at the time. Now in his forties, he nevertheless continued his extra-marital affairs; a favor returned by his young wife. When Rooney was in the Philippines filming the war movie “Ambush Bay,” he was literally ambushed by tragic news: Thomason’s jealous lover had murdered her in the Rooney’s Brentwood home. Rooney returned to the states and a cauldron of controversy. The sordid and dysfunctional personal life of the man who had played the all-American boy became fodder for the tabloids and permanently tarnished Rooney’s image. He continued plugging away in mediocre movies like “Skidoo” (1968) in an attempt to keep the demons at bay, but Judy Garland’s death from an accidental overdose of barbiturates in 1969 was an even worse punishment.

Nearing fifty and rocked by personal tragedy and professional disappointment, it would have been easy for Rooney to pack it in. But Rooney’s vaudeville training had instilled in him a powerful ethos that “the show must go on.” He kept working throughout the 1970s, seemingly in any production that would pay him. Wary of more controversy, he passed up the role of the racist Archie Bunker in the TV classic “All in the Family” (CBS, 1971-79); instead turning to family friendly fare like “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” (ABC, 1970), “The Year Without a Santa Claus” (ABC, 1974), and “Journey Back to Oz” (1974). An inveterate gambler and horse racing aficionado, his love of the ponies found artistic triumph in the film classic “The Black Stallion” (1979). Rooney turned in one of his great performances playing Henry Dailey, a once successful horse trainer who gets one last shot at immortality. Rooney received some of the best reviews of his career for a role that was a metaphor for his own creative resurrection.

Rooney followed up his Academy Award-nominated performance in “The Black Stallion” with a starring role opposite dancer Ann Miller in the long running Broadway hit “Sugar Babies” (1970-1982). Earning a Tony nomination for his stage work, he scored again with an Emmy win playing a mentally handicapped man in the TV drama “Bill” (CBS, 1981). It was the high-water mark of Rooney’s career: film, stage, and TV work of the highest quality all within a couple years and late in the game. And while he did not hit such a hot streak again, Rooney had proven to his loyal fans and vocal detractors that he still had the goods. He continued working steadily on TV and in movies such as “Night at the Museum” (2006), as well as the theater. He even traveled the world in a multi-media live stage production called “Let’s Put on a Show!” recounting his long, eventful life in show business to his still sizable fan base.

In 2011, Rooney accused his stepson Chris Aber of committing elder abuse against him, including acts of financial malfeasance; Rooney’s eighth wife and Aber’s mother, Jan Rooney, denied the allegations. Rooney testified about elder abuse before a Senate committee in March 2011 and won a multi-million dollar settlement against Aber. That same year, Rooney made his final feature film appearance with a cameo role in Jason Segel’s hit franchise reboot “The Muppets” (2011). Rooney died of undisclosed natural causes on April 6, 2014.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

John Raitt was born in Santa Anam California in 1917. He was a major Broadway star and a popular singer. He made only one film, but it was a choice one, “The Pajama Game” with Doris Day in 1957. His daughter is the singer Bonnie Raitt. John Raitt died in 2005.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

One of the top Broadway baritones of the post WWII period, John Raitt maintained an incredibly resilient career that spanned over 60 years, showing remarkable power, range and stamina for a man who defied the odds by concertizing well into his 80s. He was born in Santa Ana, California in 1917, the son of Archie John Raitt and Stella Eulalie Walton, and graduated from the University of Redlands. Studying legit with Richard Cummings in his early years, one of his first appearances would be in 1940 in the chorus of HMS Pinafore with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company. The following year he played the roles of Figaro and Count Almaviva in the Pasadena Civic Auditorium production of “The Barber of Seville,” as well as Escamillo in “Carmen.” At this time he earned an MGM contract and was seen without much fanfare in such pictures as Flight Command (1940), Little Nellie Kelly (1940) and Ziegfeld Girl (1941). 1944 proved to be John’s breakthrough year after winning the role of Curly in the Chicago production of the new big hit musical “Oklahoma!” Critics took notice of the man’s robust presence, sturdy pipes and unfailing confidence. The virile man with the sly flash in his eye then made his Broadway debut originating the role of the tormented Billy Bigelow in the now-classic musical “Carousel.” He never had to look back. His powerful rendition of the “Soliloquy” number helped him to clinch the prestigious New York Drama Critics and Donaldson Awards. John continued to impress in the musical forum with lead parts in “Magadalena,” “New Moon,” “Carnival in Flanders” and “Three Wishes for Jamie” (title role). In 1954, he found his second signature role as foreman Sid Sorokin in “The Pajama Game” oppositeJanis Paige. Here, he introduced the classic ballad “Hey There” for which he is probably best known. So ideally suited was he in this role that John was asked to transfer Sid to film, this time opposite Doris Day. Although it was an unqualified success, musical films were on their way out and he did not find any more work in the area of cinema. For the next few decades he continued to tour in roles audiences had grown to love (Curly, Billy, Sid). Other suitable vehicles would include “Shenandoah,” “1776,” “South Pacific,” “Man of La Mancha,” and “Kismet.” By this time he had also grown in stature as a concertist. Back in the 1940s John married pianist Marjorie Haydock. One of their children grew up to become singer/songwriter Bonnie Raitt (born 1949), who inherited the vocal/instrumental talents of her parents but took a different, uncompetitive path as a blues-rock guitarist. Despite their polar musical styles, father and daughter performed frequently together on the live stage. John and wife Marjorie would later divorce and he remarried. Seldom on TV, the live stage would be John’s invaluable legacy to the music world. He died in 2005 of complications from pneumonia at age 88.

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

Autographed

“Guardian” obituary:

Though the singer John Raitt was one of the great leading men of Broadway’s golden age, his reputation rests on surprisingly few hits: Carousel (1945) and The Pajama Game (on stage in 1954, and on film in 1957). Yet Raitt worked nearly continuously from 1940 almost up to his death at the age of 88. In 1995, he recorded the album John Raitt: The Broadway Legend, and sang some duets with daughter Bonnie Raitt as recently as last January. .

The qualities of his talent were thrown into particularly high relief during the father-daughter duets. Bonnie’s voice is consciously untrained, used in a style that generates an overall emotion in any given phrase, but letting the words take care of finer shades of meaning. Her father had a cultivated, operatic voice (with a more sure sense of pitch) that he used with great specificity, bordering on deliberation

A typical Raitt touch was heard in the song If I Loved You, sung by the carnival barker Billy Bigelow in Carousel; Raitt’s emphasis on the word “if” in every statement underlined the character’s ambivalence – a trait that would set off a chain reaction contributing to Billy’s demise. Not a member of the method-acting generation, Raitt was likely to deliver such things from instinct rather than analysis – or, even better, by conferring with the authors.

It is said that Raitt’s vocal prowess – which he demonstrated to songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein upon replacing Alfred Drake in Oklahoma! – inspired the famous seven-minute dramatic tour-de-force Soliloquy from Carousel. Not so much a song as a musical scene depicting the contemplation of impending fatherhood, Soliloquy was a breakthrough in Broadway theatre for its length, operatic weight of expression and emotional nakedness, virtually unheard of for male characters in this genre.

Though Raitt’s career peaked with Carousel, his performances were remarkably consistent, often despite substandard material, such as the ambitious, idiosyncratic Heitor Villa-Lobos musical Magdalena in 1948 (which Raitt revisited some 40 years later in a concert version in New York), Three Wishes For Jamie (1952) and Carnival In Flanders (1953). The only post-Carousel hit he originated was The Pajama Game.

That, plus a primitive television version of Annie Get Your Gun, with Mary Martin, were Raitt’s only major screen appearances, and it is hard to say why. Though he mastered the more subtle art of screen acting, his wide-spaced eyes played oddly from some camera angles, magnifying a vaguely ethnic look that may have challenged the white hegemony of 1950s Hollywood.

In any case, Raitt was a servant of the theatre. His looks and voice made him a natural candidate for Las Vegas, which he resisted, according to Bonnie, because he disliked the unwholesome atmosphere of such engagements. More likely, he was of a generation when the singer was the messenger of song and characters, and may have simply been at a loss to adapt to the kind of self-aggrandising song styling that was customary in 1960s Las Vegas.

I n time, the Broadway Raitt had come to define turned away from him. The invasion of artificial amplification meant voices like his were no longer really needed. Also, Broadway subject matter was leaving him behind. When, in the mid-1970s, he toured with a minor musical entitled Seesaw, he admitted to being so frustrated with his vocal under-utilisation that he performed a mini-concert of his old standards after every show. Because he kept his fees low enough to be a viable hire for summer theatre seasons, he took on roles that strayed far from his romantic leading-man image, such as Fiddler On The Roof and Zorba The Greek.

Little in his background or early life pointed to such future dedication to show business. Just as easily, Raitt might have become a sports coach, having distinguished himself with track and field skills in Santa Ana, California, where he was born and grew up. His singing began in chorus work at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, graduating to less light opera such as the Barber Of Seville – an aria from which he sang at his first Rodgers and Hammerstein audition.

Though Raitt had three children by his first wife, Marjorie Haydock (they divorced in 1971) – Bonnie, Steven and David – he had a particularly close rapport with Bonnie. During a free day from a Broadway tour, he would drive to the next city where she had a tour stop. When her 1989 comeback album, Nick Of Time, swept the Grammy awards, he was with her at the ceremony. They sang at each other’s weddings, she at his third marriage, to Rosemary Kraemer, in 1981, and he at her 1991 wedding.

Rosemary and his children survive him.