Rex Reed was born in 1938 in Fort Worth, Texas. He is a film writer for the New York Observer. He has acted in films and had a leading role with Raquel Welch in “Myra Breckinridge” in 1968.
IMDB entry:
Rex Reed
Rex was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in Louisiana. He became one of the most prolific movie critics in the country, and for decades has written entertainment columns for The New York Observer.
Rex Reed
In 1970, Rex made his movie debut, playing Myron in Myra Breckinridge (1970) – Myron was the young man whose post sex-change operation persona was played by Raquel Welch. But Rex’s success came in reviewing movies, not starring in them.
Rex currently lives in New York – at the Dakota, one of Manhattan’s most expensive and exclusive apartment buildings (John Lennon was shot there). Rex also owns a spread in an elite corner of rural Connecticut, and is a single man-about-town. Movie stars may come and go, but movie reviews by Rex Reed go on forever.
Richard Farnsworth was born in 1920 in Los Angeles. In his teens he worked as a stuntsman in such films as 1937’s “The Adventures of Marco Polo” with Gary Cooper. He had small parts in such films as “Red River”, “The Wold One” and “The Ten Commandments”. In the 1970’s he began to get larger parts and won widespread claim in “Come a Horseman” with Jane Fonda in 1979. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1999 for his tender and wonderful performance in “The Straight Story”. Richard Farnsworth died in 2000.
Lee J. Cobb was born in 1911 in New York City. His first film was “The Vanishing Shadow” in 1934. Other key films include “Song of Bernadette” with Jennifer Jones, “Anna and the King of Siam”, “12 Angry Men” and “Our Man Flint”. He is best known for his role as Judge Garth in “The Virginian”.One of his final roles was in “The Exorcist”. Lee J. Cobb died suddenly in 1976.
TCM overview:
A powerhouse actor of both stage and screen, Cobb joined the Group Theater in 1935, appearing in Clifford Odets’ “Waiting for Lefty” and “Golden Boy” before making his screen debut in 1937. He often played boorish characters or heavies, most memorably as the corrupt boss in “On The Waterfront” (1954) and the bigot in “Twelve Angry Men” (1957). He is also remembered for creating the role of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s 1949 play “Death of a Salesman”, which he recreated for television in 1966.
Michael O’Shea was an American actor, popular on film in the 1940’s. He was born in 1906 in Hartford, Connecticut. His films include “Lady of Burlesque” with Barbara Stanwyck and in 1944 he reprised his stage role in “The Eve of St Mark. He died in 1973 in Texas. He was long married to Virginia Mayo.
Film actress Virginia Mayo is escorted by her husband, Michael O’Shea, to the Fan Ball held in aid of the Children’s Memorial Cancer Fund, at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
May Wynn was born in 1928 in New York City. Her first film was “Dreamboat” with Anne Francis and Jeffrey Hunter in 1952. She won the lead female role in “The Caine Mutiny” in 1954. Her other films include “They RodeWest” and “The Violent Men”. Her last film was “Hong Kong Affair” in 1958.
Article from 2009 in “Captain’s Critic”:So I took my own advice and started rereading Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny.” Just as fabulous as I remember.
But a short ways into the book, Willie Keith meets his girlfriend — May Wynn. In my “Reeling Backward” review, that’s the name I used for the actress who appears in the movie version. I thought I’d made a mistake, and used the character’s name rather than the actress’. So I logged on here to fix it.
Wanna hear something really screwy? The actress’ name is May Wynn.
In something that could only happen in Golden Age Hollywood, her name was changed to the name of her character in the movie, which was going to be her big break-out role.
After a little digging, I learned that big-wheel producer Stanley Kramer decided that the name of Donna Lee Hickey just wasn’t going to cut it as a movie star. So he had her take the name of her character in the movie!
It does have a nice ring to it, with those two short syllables. Kramer liked it because it was impossible to mispronounce. Plus it has a positive connotation since it sounds like, “May win.”
It’s actually not the real name of the character, either. When Willie tells her he likes her name, she says, “That’s good. It took me a long time to think of it.” Turns out her real handle is Marie Minotti, and she’s using May Wynn as her stage name.
So let me just lay out this scenario again: A fictional character gives herself a stage name, an actress is hired to play her in the movie, and the studio makes her change her real name to that of the character’s made-up name. So May Wynn is a triple-fake name, or something.
Isn’t that screwy? Imagine if in 1977 Carrie Fisher was forced to change her name to Princess Leia Organa. Or if Indiana Jones was played by a guy named Han Solo.
Anyway, May Wynn made quite an impression on me in the film, even though it’s a small role. We first see her singing in a nightclub wearing this red dress that’s really va-voom for the era. She had short, dark hair — unusual for female stars of the time, long and blonde being the thing in the 1940s and ’50s. She actually resembles my mother when she was a youngster … very Freudian, I know.
Anyway, May’s showbiz career was pretty short. She did a bunch of television for a few years after “Caine Mutiny,” but Imdb.com lists no credits for her after 1959. She’s still alive, reportedly living quietly in California. I’d be very curious to know: Does she still go by the name bestowed on her by a studio honcho 55 years ago?
May Wynn died in 2021.
The above article from “Captain’s Critic” can be accessed online here.
Daily Telegraph obituary in 2021:
May Wynn, actress best known as a nightclub singer in The Caine Mutiny
She changed her name to that of her Caine Mutiny chanteuse, but her career did not catch fire as she had hoped
May Wynn, who has died aged 93, was an actress, singer and dancer who was, perhaps, the only film star to be renamed after one of her characters.
In Edward Dmytryk’s The Caine Mutiny (1954), starring Humphrey Bogart, Donna Hickey played May Wynn, a sultry nightclub artiste (although her singing voice was dubbed by Jo Ann Greer). The studio mogul Harry Cohn was so impressed that he had her adopt her character’s name. “I finally thought I had made it in Hollywood,” she recalled. “I wanted to be the next Lana Turner.”
Donna Lee Hickey was born to vaudevillians in New York on January 8 1928. She followed her parents into show business, dancing in nightclubs across New York before being given a residence at the Copacabana Club aged 16.
“Some of the girls had a great desire to try their luck in Hollywood,” she said in 2010. “I was one of them. However, the little men who’d come by the Copacabana on the promise of something from the girls in exchange for a screen test overlooked me. I was young and awkward. In hindsight I had a lucky escape.”
She was later crowned Miss American Legion, Miss Miami Beach and Queen of the New York Press Photographers Ball.
In 1950 she was introduced by a New York talent scout to William Gordon, a casting director at 20th Century Fox, but she made her screen debut at MGM the following year in the Esther Williams musical Skirts Ahoy!
When the 20th Century Fox mogul Darryl Zanuck spotted her on screen, he personally oversaw a lucrative six-month contract. But, she recalled: “I was miserable at Fox. Every week I’d hail a taxi go to the lot, pick up my salary cheque and then home again with no work to speak of aside from little bit parts.”
May Wynn in The Caine Mutiny CREDIT: alamy
She was tested by Columbia for the role of Lorene in From Here to Eternity (1953), but she lost out to Donna Reed, who won an Oscar for her performance. Distraught at being overlooked, Donna Hickey joined a trip to entertain the troops in Korea.
On her return, at the beginning of 1953, she received a telephone call from the producer Stanley Kramer, who thought she would be perfect as May Wynn in The Caine Mutiny.
Following its success, and now going by the name of her character in the film, she had roles on television and featured in two Westerns, They Rode West (1954) and Rough Company (1955), as well as in B-grade fare such as The White Squaw and The Man Is Armed (both 1956), the latter for the “poverty row” studio Republic.
May Wynn began dating Robert Francis, one of her Caine Mutiny co-stars, but he was killed in July 1955 when his plane crashed approaching Burbank airport. She was subsequently linked to Peter Lawford and Frank Sinatra, then in 1956 she married the actor Jack Kelly. She followed him to the Far East, where he was filming Hong Kong Affair (1958), and was given the role of Chu Lan after the intended local actress turned out not to speak English.
May Wynn called it a day during the early 1960s, but not before running a film company, Majak Productions (from “May” and “Jack”), which she formed with Kelly. For 28 years she taught handwriting and public speaking at Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic school in Newport Beach, and also worked in real estate.
She lived in contented obscurity until 2003, when she turned up at a Hollywood autograph show complete with a stack of 8 x 10 portrait shots which she happily sold to film fans.
May Wynn divorced Jack Kelly in 1962 and married a fellow realtor, Jack Custer, in 1968. They divorced in 1979.
Peter Kastner was born in 1943 in Toronto. In 1966 he was given the lead by Francis Ford Coppolla in “You’r A Big Boy Now”.In 1971 he had the lead in “B.S. I LOve You”. However his film career was not extensive. Peter Kastner died in 2008 at the age of 64.
Peter Kastner graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in Modern European History. He studied also at UCLA for a Masters degree in that field but put those studies aside to pursue acting work. He was a lifelong learner, most recently teaching himself Yiddish in the original Hebrew script.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jenny Kastner (Peter’s widow)
Everett Sloane was born in 1909 in New York. He was part of Orson Welles’s “Mercury Theatre Group” and played Mr Bernstein in “Citizen Kane” in 1941. Other films of note include “Journey Into Fear”, “The Lady from Shanghai”, “The Blue Veil”, “Patterns” and “The Men” with Marlon Brando and Teresa Wright. He always looked older than his years. Everett Sloane died in 1965 at the age of 55.
His IMDB entry:
Everett Sloane, the actor most known for playing Mr. Bernstein in Orson Welles classicCitizen Kane (1941) as a member of Welles’ Mercury Players, was born in New York, New York on October 1, 1909. Sloane was bitten by the acting bug quite early, and first went on-stage when he was seven years old. After high school, he attended the University of Pennsylvania but soon dropped out to pursue an acting career, joining a theatrical stock company. However, he was discouraged by poor personal reviews and returned to New York City, where he worked as a runner on Wall Street.
After the Stock Market Crash of October 1929, Sloane turned to radio for employment as an actor. His voice won him steady work, and he even became the voice of Adolf Hitler on “The March of Time” serials. He made his Broadway debut in 1935 as part of George Abbott‘s company, in “Boy Meets Girl,” which was followed by another play for Abbott, “All That Glitters” in 1938. Eventually, he joined Welles’ Mercury Theatre, appearing in the 1941 stage production of Richard Wright‘s “Native Son,” directed by Welles. However, before that Broadway landmark, Welles had cast Sloane as Mr. Bernstein in his first feature film, which ensured Sloane’s immortality in the cinema. (Sloane would remain a Mercury Player until 1947, when he appeared as Bannister in Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai (1947).)
Outside his two memorable supporting roles for Welles, Sloane’s reputation rests on his portrayal Walter Ramsey, a ruthless corporate executive trying to crush another executive, in the TV and screen versions of Rod Serling’s Patterns (1956). According to Jack Gould’s January 17, 1955, “New York Times” review of the TV program, which debuted on Ponds Theater (1953): “In the role of Ramsey, Mr. Sloane was extraordinary. He made a part that easily might have been only a stereotyped ‘menace’ a figure of dimension, almost of stature. His interpretation of the closing confrontation speech was acting of rare insight and depth.” Sloane was nominated for an Emmy in 1956 for the performance.
In addition to his movie work, Sloane appeared extensively on TV as an actor, directed several episodic-TV programs, and did voice over work for the cartoon series The Dick Tracy Show (1961) and Jonny Quest (1964). Plagued with failing eye sight, a depressed Sloane quit acting and eventually took his life at the age of 55.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Lloyd’s Of London, poster, (aka LLOYDS OF LONDON), Freddie Bartholomew, Tyrone Power, Madeleine Carroll, 1936. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Freddie Bartholomew was one of the most popular child stars in U.S. films of the 1930’s. He was born in 1924 in Lodon. He was raised in England and made two films there before going to Hollywood in 1934, He played the young David in the wonderful 1934 “David Copperfield” which was directed by George Cukor. His other films included “Anna Karenina” with Greta Garbo, “Little Lord Fauntleroy” with Mickey Rooney and “Captains Courageous” with Spencer Tracy. He served in the Airforce during World War Two and did not pursue a film career but became an asvertising executive in New York. He died at the age of 67 in Floria in 1992.
TCM Overview:
Curly-haired Hollywood child star whose earnest presence, refined British diction and angelic looks established him as a boxoffice favorite in the 1930s and 40s. After a few minor roles in British films, the ten-year-old was signed by MGM to star as Dickens’s hero in David O. Selznick’s production of “David Copperfield” (1935). He went on to play Greta Garbo’s son in “Anna Karenina” (1935) and followed up with his two most popular roles: as the American boy who learns he is the heir to a dukedom in “Little Lord Fauntleroy” (1936) and as a pampered rich brat who is rescued and educated by rough fishermen in Rudyard Kipling’s adventure yarn, “Captains Courageous” (1937).
With a salary eclipsed only by that of child superstar Shirley Temple, Bartholomew was earning $2,500 a week by the late 30s, though his career began to wane after numerous court battles between his guardian-aunt and his parents over his earnings. After service in WWII he made a stab at a career in vaudeville and nightclubs before turning to TV, where he hosted a daytime program in the 1950s and then became associate director of a New York TV station. In the mid-1950s he again switched careers, this time joining New York’s Benton and Bowles agency as an advertising executive.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
