tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822164038199064672024-02-19T09:53:35.979+00:00A Final Curtain CallThe lives of the famous and talented are often immortalised in the work they leave behind, but what happened to them in the end, as they took their final curtain call? This blog records the last known photos, final professional appearances and closing moments of those who have left us celebrating their eternal talent...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-2070929891163763292018-03-13T14:25:00.001+00:002018-03-22T11:10:09.958+00:00Coronation Street - Part 1<div>
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<b>First broadcast: </b>Friday, December 9th, 1960 in the UK</div>
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<b>Description:</b> Granada Television soap opera created by Tony Warren, set in and around a small terraced backstreet in the fictional town of Weatherfield (based on the real-life city of Salford, near Manchester). Initially broadcast twice a week between 1961 and 1989, the soap then broadcast three episodes a week between 1989 and 1996, four between 1996 and 2009, five regularly between 2009 and 2017, and a sixth was added in September 2017.<br />
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There have been several spin-offs over the years, including:<br />
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<li><b>Pardon the Expression</b>, a sitcom featuring Arthur Lowe as Leonard Swindley, a clothing store manager who left the parent show in 1965, but appeared in two series and 36 episodes of this spin-off between June 1965 and June 1966. Pardon the Expression itself had its own spin-off, <b>Turn Out the Lights</b>, which ran for one series and six episodes between January and February 1967, also featuring Lowe as Swindley.</li>
<li><b>Albion Market</b> was intended as a sister soap to Coronation Street, set in Weatherfield's undercover market, but only ran for one year (between August 1985 and August 1986) and 100 episodes.</li>
<li><b>The Brothers McGregor</b>, a sitcom set in Liverpool featuring two characters who had appeared in one episode of Coronation Street (Eddie Yeats and Marion Willis's engagement, May 1982). The sitcom ran for four series and 26 episodes between September 1985 and August 1988, but the two leads were not the same actors who's played the wheeler-dealer brothers in the parent show. In Coronation Street, Wesley and Cyril were played by Carl Chase and Tony Osoba, whereas in the spin-off, they were played by Philip Whitchurch and Paul Barber.</li>
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<i>Please note: This series of blogs will look at what became of cast members who appeared in more than 500 episodes, and have now passed away (obviously!). However, there will be an additional blog looking at well-remembered actors/ characters who deserve honourable mentions, but were in fewer than 500 editions.</i><br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">JILL SUMMERS</span></u></b> (born Honour Margaret Rosell Santoi Fuller)</div>
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<b>Played:</b> Phyllis Pearce (nee Grimes) (1982-96)</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> December 8th, 1910</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Eccles, Lancashire, UK</div>
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<b>Died:</b> January 11th, 1997</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Salford, Lancashire, UK</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Kidney failure</div>
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Jill first appeared as Phyllis on The Street at the age of 72 (a decade older than Phyllis), working in Jim's Cafe, and was renowned for her gravelly voice and purple-rinsed hair. But she'd actually had an earlier appearance as a cleaning colleague of Hilda Ogden's at the Capricorn nightclub, called Bessie Proctor, in November 1972.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jill, aged 47, in a publicity photo for<br />
her ITV series Summers Here</td></tr>
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Jill started out her entertainment career as a music hall performer and comedian, entertaining the troops during World War Two, when she was known as Jill Summers, Pin-Up of the British Railways, and performed the act The Pipes of Pan. During these music hall days she often performed alongside her later Coronation Street co-stars Bill Waddington and Tom Mennard.<br />
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Into the 1990s, Jill suffered increasingly from angina, but although she was ill more and more, refused to let Phyllis be written out, and made occasional, fleeting appearances until her final scene, at the age of 85, on May 1st, 1996 (her 509th episode). Phyllis moved into a retirement complex at Mayfield Court, and the last we heard of her was in 1998, when she was reportedly living happily in retirement with old sparring partners Percy Sugden and Maud Grimes. Her final line on the programme (to Maud) was: "There's three wheelie bins under my window, and I've never turned my gas low."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jill as a young music hall star</td></tr>
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Jill died of kidney failure on January 11th, 1997, just over eight months after she'd left The Street. She was 86 years old, and twice widowed - once in the late 1920s to an unidentified man 20 years her senior, and again in 1984 to her musical hall scriptwriter, surgeon Dr Cliff Simpson-Smith. Jill's funeral was held at Eccles crematorium on January 22nd, 1997, attended by many of her Street co-stars, including Geoff Hinsliff, Sally Whittaker, Barbara Knox, Sarah Lancashire, Kevin Kennedy and Elizabeth Bradley.<br />
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A little-known fact is that Jill shared part of her family tree with UK Prime Minister John Major - although there's no blood-link, Jill's mother Marie Santoi once had offspring with the politician's father, Tom Major-Ball.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coronation Street stars at Jill Summers's funeral, 11 days after she died.</td></tr>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">GEOFFREY HUGHES</span></u></b></div>
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<b>Played:</b> Eddie Yeats (1974-83 & 1987)</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> February 2nd, 1944</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Wallasey, Merseyside, UK</div>
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<b>Died:</b> July 27th, 2012</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Isle of Wight, UK</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Prostate cancer</div>
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Geoffrey made his debut as bin man Eddie Yeats on the Street on December 23rd, 1974 and was a regular in the soap for the next nine years (he'd played thug Phil Ferguson in the soap seven years before, in 1967). During his time on the cobbles, Geoffrey did make a handful of appearances in other productions, such as the sitcom Don't Drink the Water (1975) and the film Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976), but he made his final regular appearance as Eddie on December 7th, 1983. Eddie got a transfer on the bins from Weatherfield to Bury so that his wife Marion could care for her mother Winifred, who had suffered a stroke. Behind the scenes, Geoffrey had misgivings about the direction the character was going in, thinking the fact Eddie was now married meant he would be less fun to play, and more in demand ("I just found it harder and harder to do. I was unable to concentrate and I was really tired.")<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geoffrey as Eddie Yeats with Veronica<br />
Doran as Marion in Coronation Street</td></tr>
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In 1984, Hilda received a phone call from Eddie to say that his and Marion's daughter Dawn had been born, and Hilda relayed the information to those in the Rover's Return. Geoffrey made a brief return to Coronation Street four years later to take part in the departure of Jean Alexander as Hilda Ogden, who had recently been attacked and injured in a burglary. Eddie's brief return lasted two episodes, broadcast on November 30th and December 2nd, 1987. His last line was to Hilda: "Keep smiling!". After that, the producers of the soap asked Geoffrey to return as Eddie many times, but the actor always declined the offers.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geoffrey on his Coronation Street return<br />
in December 1987, aged 43</td></tr>
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Geoffrey's career certainly didn't suffer after leaving Coronation Street, and he had roles in many series, from The Bright Side (1985), Doctor Who (1986) and Flying Lady (1989), to Making Out (1990-91), Casualty (2007) and Skins (2007-09). However, he will always be remembered for two particular recurring characters - slob Onslow in 44 episodes of the BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances (1990-95), and Vernon Scripps in 88 episodes of 1960s-set police series Heartbeat (2001-05, with a brief return in 2007). He also regularly played Twiggy in sitcom The Royle Family (1998-2008).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geoffrey in early 2009, aged 64</td></tr>
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In 2009, Geoffrey was appointed Deputy Lord Lieutenant for the Isle of Wight, making him the official link between the island and royalty at formal engagements. Geoffrey's final screen appearance was playing Uncle Keith in an episode of Skins called Freddie, broadcast on February 19th, 2009 (he's also recently appeared as himself on daytime talk show Loose Women, on February 2nd, 2009). After that, he gave his voice to the part of a clown in the 7-minute animated short The History of Stand-Up Comedy (2010).<br />
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Geoffrey was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, at the age of 52, but he recovered. However, while attending a charity event in 2010 he suffered from extreme back pains, and soon discovered that the cancer had returned. He was forced to retire from acting, until he finally succumbed to the disease on July 27th, 2012, aged just 68, dying peacefully in his sleep.</div>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><u>FRED FEAST</u> </b></span>(born Frederick Feast)</div>
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<b>Played:</b> Fred Gee (1975-84)</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> October 5th, 1929</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Scarborough, Yorkshire, UK</div>
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<b>Died:</b> June 25th, 1999</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Bridlington, Yorkshire, UK</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Abdominal cancer</div>
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Fred Gee was the cellarman-cum-barman in the Rover's Return under the matriarchal landlady Annie Walker, who made his Corrie debut on September 29th, 1975 and appeared in 561 episodes over the next nine years. Fred Feast had actually appeared as a barman at the Red Lion pub called Fred in two earlier episodes (in January and March 1972), but there were no indications that this was the same Fred Gee.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fred with Meg Johnson as Eunice Gee</td></tr>
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Like many Coronation Street performers, Fred Feast started out as a music hall and nightclub entertainer, but he also had many other job titles on his CV, including driving instructor, trawlerman, dolphin trainer, publican and a sergeant in the Parachute Regiment.<br />
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In 1983, Fred took time off sick without any notice to his bosses, and the scriptwriters were forced to hastily rewrite six weeks of storylines, Fred claimed to be depressed, unable to learn his lines, and prone to uncontrollable bouts of crying. Fred eventually returned to work, but in 1984 he took time off again, and this time never returned. Fred refused to sign a new contract, telling newspapers that he didn't want to become "another Coronation Street cabbage".<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fred in 1984, aged 55</td></tr>
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In his 1990 memoirs, Coronation Street producer Bill Podmore said: "Fred gave us all more than our share of trouble. He was not much of an ambassador for Coronation Street and there were several occasions when I hauled him into the office for a dressing down. On one particularly embarrassing occasion he distinguished himself at a Variety Club dinner by shaking bottles of champagne and spraying anyone within range."<br />
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Fred Gee was not killed off or written out; he simply disappeared, and not referred to by other characters. Gee's last appearance was on November 28th, 1984, at Stan Ogden's funeral, after which he is not seen or referred to again. Fred's estranged wife Eunice returned to the Street in 1999, and said that Fred had died of a heart attack the year before, aged 69.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fred in Liz Dawn's House Party</td></tr>
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Months after leaving the soap, Fred was diagnosed with throat cancer. After an operation and several years of treatment, he was given the all-clear in 1991.<br />
<br />
Fred's career after leaving the Street was short. Between 1988-89 he played knackerman Jeff Mallock in five episodes of the veterinary series All Creatures Great and Small. There was then a nine year gap until he played the character of pigeon fancier Arthur in the film Little Voice (1998), and finally played Wilson in an episode of 1960s-set police series Heartbeat, fittingly called Hello, Goodbye (broadcast on October 25th, 1998).<br />
<br />
However, he did make a number of appearances as himself on TV after leaving the soap, including the quiz show Blankety Blank (1985), Esther Rantzen's series Life After Soap (1995) and the 1996 VHS release Liz Dawn's House Party, which featured a wealth of stars to celebrate the actress's birthday. Fred appeared behind Liz's bar as a party guest.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fred in his last acting role,<br />
in Heartbeat</td></tr>
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Fred died of abdominal cancer on June 25th, 1999, at the age of just 69 (the same age that Fred Gee died in the soap). Former co-stars paid tribute, including Liz Dawn ("I visited him in hospital a while ago and wanted to visit him again, but unfortunately he was not well enough. It is very sad"), William Roache ("Fred was always full of life and enjoyed life to the full") and Meg Johnson, who played his screen wife Eunice ("He was a joy to work with. Although I haven't seen Fred for some time, it's terribly sad that he's no longer with us").<br />
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Fred left a wife, three daughters and three grandchildren. His funeral took place on July 1st, 1999.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><u>PETER BALDWIN</u></b></span></div>
<div>
<b>Played:</b> Derek Wilton (1976-97)</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> July 29th, 1933</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Chidham, Sussex, UK</div>
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<b>Died:</b> October 21st, 2015</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Hampstead, London, UK</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Cancer</div>
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Derek Wilton was a character who popped in and out of Coronation Street for a number of years until finally becoming a regular. Peter's earliest appearance as Derek was in February 1976, and over the following decade he was in and out of his suitor Mavis Riley's life until he became a more permanent fixture in 1988, when he finally married Mavis (played by Thelma Barlow - not the only case of a Baldwin marrying a Barlow in Coronation Street!).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peter as Mr Simms in Within<br />
These Walls (1978)</td></tr>
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Peter Baldwin had enjoyed regular small roles in a number of TV series during his sporadic time on Coronation Street between 1976-88, including parts in Within These Walls (1978), The Hard Word (1983), Goodbye Mr Chips (1984) and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: At Bertram's Hotel (1987).<br />
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He appeared in 283 episodes of the soap in total, over a 21-year period, until the character of Derek Wilton was killed off by producer Brian Park - Derek suffered a fatal heart attack after a road rage incident on Mavis's 60th birthday, on April 7th, 1997. There was some displeasure at Park's decision at the time, with Baldwin unhappy about leaving, and it was reported that Thelma Barlow (who played Mavis) decided to leave as a result of Peter's departure (in 2010 she denied this, claiming she'd already decided to leave). However, after Peter's death, Thelma wrote a tribute in the Radio Times, saying: "It was a total shock when they decided to kill off Derek. I had been intending to leave for a couple of years as I wanted to do more theatre, so they could easily have killed off Mavis instead. It was a cruel blow to Peter, and to me and the Street really, as Derek was such a popular character. Now, with Peter's death, a chunk has been taken out of my life. I loved him dearly and I shall miss him such a lot."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peter's last ever appearance on<br />
screen, as the ghost of Derek,<br />
in December 2012, aged 79</td></tr>
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After leaving the Street at the age of 64, Peter's career entered a twilight phase. Initially, he was busy with appearances on quiz and chat shows, as well as theatre tours, but then things started to slow down, with work in Cadfael (1998), The Courtroom (2001) and Doctors (2001 and 2006). One of his last screen roles was as Heptonstall in sitcom Last of the Summer Wine in June 2009, with his final role being Philip Wilkins in the first episode of the series Crime Stories, on November 12th, 2012.<br />
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Well, it wasn't quite his final role, because Peter actually reprised the part of Derek Wilton on December 21st, 2012 as part of a sketch for ITV's annual charity telethon Text Santa. A Christmas Corrie was a spoof of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Derek Wilton appeared as the Ghost of Christmas Present to Norris Cole's Ebenezer Scrooge.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peter in July 2012, being interviewed<br />
about his time on the soap</td></tr>
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Peter had been a widower since 1987, when his wife Sarah Long (who was a presenter on children's series Play School) died of cancer, aged just 49. When he wasn't acting, he worked and managed Pollock's Toy Museum and Shop at Covent Garden, which he'd taken part-ownership of in 1988. He passed away at home following a short battle with cancer on October 21st, 2015, aged 82. He left two adult children called Julia and Matthew.<br />
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A memorial service was held on April 14th, 2016 at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden. You can watch an interview with Peter - reunited with screen wife and off-screen friend Thelma Barlow - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGsfGXM3Ql4" target="_blank">from July 2012 here</a>.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><u>ARTHUR LESLIE</u> </b></span>(born Arthur Leslie Scottorn Broughton)</div>
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<b>Played:</b> Jack Walker (1960-70)</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> December 8th, 1899</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, UK</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Died:</b> June 30th, 1970</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Cardigan, Ceredigion, UK</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack</div>
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Arthur played Jack Walker, husband of Annie Walker, the landlady of the Rover's Return, from the second episode of Coronation Street, broadcast on December 14th, 1960 - just six days after his 61st birthday. His role in Coronation Street was a rare screen role for a man who was more accustomed to the stage than television. Arthur's only non-Street role was in an episode of Knight Errant Limited, broadcast in February 1960.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack and Annie in the Rover's Return</td></tr>
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Arthur (who also wrote stage plays, sometimes under the name of Arthur S Broughton) played Jack Walker in over 220 episodes of the soap, making his last appearance on June 24th, 1970. Six days later, Arthur died suddenly of a heart attack whilst on holiday in Mid-Wales, aged just 70.<br />
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His character, Jack Walker, was the first to be written out of the programme following the death of the actor, and it was decided that Jack should die by the same means as Arthur - a heart attack. The producers did not show Jack's funeral on screen, in respect of Arthur's grieving family, and the character's passing was presented as an already established fact in the episode shown on July 8th, 1970 (in other words, no character found out about Jack's death on screen).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arthur with Doris Speed and Jean Alexander pictured in 1967</td></tr>
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In tribute, Violet Carson (who played Ena Sharples) said: "He was a loyal friend and a great professional", while Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner) said: "We all just loved him. He was the most loved man on both the inside and the outside of the studio." Doris Speed, who played Annie Walker, considered leaving the soap soon after Arthur's passing, but was persuaded to stay, which she did for another 13 years. On his death, she said: "The qualities of sweetness and kindness in Jack Walker came, in fact, from Arthur Leslie himself."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arthur's son Tony Broughton in a 2011<br />
episode of Scott and Bailey, aged 79.<br />
The episode was broadcast in June,<br />
and Tony died in July 2011</td></tr>
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Arthur is buried in the churchyard of St Stephens-on-the-Cliffs in Blackpool. He left his wife Betty (who appeared in Coronation Street in 1963 as a customer of clothes shop Miami Modes) and their son, the actor Tony Broughton, who also appeared in Coronation Street in four different parts - a retail friend of Alf Roberts, who died of a heart attack in Alf's corner shop (1993); a court clerk at the trials of Jim and Steve McDonald (1996); the vicar at the funeral of Maxine Peacock (2003); and a taxi passenger who witnessed the end of Jon Stape's kidnapping of Rosie Webster (2008).<br />
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Long after Arthur Leslie's passing, his birth name continued to be associated with the Street, not just through his son Tony, but also Tony's wife, June Broughton, who played three parts in the soap, the most memorable being Joan Lowther, for whom Hilda Ogden was employed as a cleaner in the 1980s.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><u>MAGGIE JONES</u> </b></span>(born Margaret Jones)</div>
<div>
<b>Played:</b> Blanche Hunt (1974-2009)</div>
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<div>
<b>Birthdate:</b> June 21st, 1934</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> London, UK</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Died:</b> December 2nd, 2009</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Pendleton, Greater Manchester, UK</div>
<div>
<b>Cause of death:</b> Complications following surgery</div>
<div>
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Maggie's very first television job was actually on Coronation Street, when, at the age of 27, she played a policewoman in July 1961. She returned to the Street in a second role, as shoplifter Maggie Monks, on December 4th, 1967, detained in a police station, where she met Annie Walker, who was being questioned after accidentally breaking a shop window. Annie was not best pleased to find herself sitting next to the somewhat common Maggie, who advised her that the best way to get off with something was to pretend she had a bad memory and couldn't remember anything!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maggie as shoplifter Maggie Monks<br />
in December, 1967, aged 33</td></tr>
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Maggie was the second person to play Blanche Hunt, Deidre Barlow's sharp-tongued mother. The first actress was Patricia Cutts, who appeared only twice in August 1974, before she was found dead after committing suicide on September 6th that year. Cutts suffered from depression.<br />
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Blanche was hastily recast and Maggie Jones made her first appearance on September 30th, 1974, and appeared in approximately 600 episodes as Blanche over the following 35 years. At first the character appeared only periodically (1974-76, then brief returns in 1977, 1978 and 1981) but from 1996 onwards, she became more regular, finally moving in with the Barlows at Number 1 in 1999.<br />
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When Maggie wasn't being Blanche, her career took in roles in regular roles in series such as The Forsyte Saga (1967), Sam (1973-75), Rosie (1977-79), Sharon and Elsie (1984-85) and South of the Border (1985). Her final non-Blanche role before joining the Street full-time was in a 1998 episode of Picking Up the Pieces.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maggie as the recast Blanche in 1974,<br />
aged 40, with "daughter" Anne Kirkbride</td></tr>
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In 1971, Maggie married barrister John Stansfield, who was from a wealthy family and owned several estates, including in London and Gloucestershire, near Berkeley Castle. John died in 1999.<br />
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On April 18th, 2008, the then 73-year-old Maggie fell while at the Manchester hotel she used during filming, and injured her knee and shoulder. She took a fortnight off work, and was written out of the soap again when she fell ill a second time in October 2009. She was admitted to hospital for major surgery (the nature of which was never disclosed), and was thought to be making a steady recovery, but sadly died in her sleep on December 2nd, aged 75.<br />
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Maggie's last appearance as Blanche aired nine days later, and the character died of a heart attack while on an extended holiday in Portugal with her friend May Penn, on May 3rd, 2010. Maggie's funeral took place in Clerkenwell, London, on December 15th, 2009. A memorial service was held at Salford Cathedral on February 25th, 2010, for which filming was suspended so the cast could attend. William Roache and Anne Kirkbride both gave emotional tributes, while Sue Nicholls read out a poem by comedienne Joyce Grenfell, a favourite of Maggie's.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Roache and Anne Kirkbride at Maggie Jones's<br />
memorial service in February 2010</td></tr>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><u>ROY BARRACLOUGH</u></b></span></div>
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<b>Played:</b> Alec Gilroy (1972, 1975, 1986-92, 1995, 1996-98)</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> July 12th, 1935</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Preston, UK</div>
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<b>Died:</b> June 1st, 2017</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Ashton-Under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, UK</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Undisclosed</div>
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The somewhat sleazy, always mournful theatrical impresario Alec Gilroy made his first appearance in Coronation Street as Rita Littlewood's agent at the Working Men's Club in Victoria Street on June 26th, 1972. However, actor Roy Barraclough had already appeared in the show four times as four different bit-parts - a tour guide in 1965, a guitar salesman in 1967, a window cleaner in 1968, and a restaurant diner in 1970.<br />
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Alec made a return in 1975, again in connection to Rita's singing career, but by the mid-1980s he was running the squalid Graffiti Club, across the road from the Rovers Return, and eyed the pub as a rival. The character reappeared on a more regular basis in the summer of 1986, and by the following year was married to Bet Lynch and landlord of the Rovers. However, Barraclough was never too keen on staying in the one job for too long, and when his contract was up for renewal in 1988, he wanted out. The scriptwriters began planning Alec's exit, but suddenly, Roy had a change of heart, and he decided to stay on. The truth was, however, that the actor was never comfortable with the possibility of being typecast, and in 1992 he finally quit the role, asking the producers to kill the character off.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Rita and Vera</td></tr>
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Luckily, they didn't, and Alec made a return three years later as part of Julie Goodyear's departure storyline, and also popped up in the straight-to-video drama The Feature-Length Special that year, as an entertainments manager on a cruise ship. Barraclough was persuaded back to the Street on a more permanent basis in April 1996, first as a travel agency manager, and latterly as landlord of the Rovers alongside Jack and Vera Duckworth.<br />
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Alec Gilroy's last ever appearance in the show was on December 30th, 1998, after he sold the Rovers to Natalie Barnes and left Weatherfield for good with granddaughter Vicky McDonald. The two characters reportedly opened a restaurant in Brighton, and in 2002, when Bet returned to the Street, she said that the two had divorced.<br />
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Never completely happy as a long-term regular of the cast, Roy Barraclough was also very well-known for his comedy partnership with Les Dawson, playing Cissie Braithwaite to Dawson's Ada Shufflebottom. He was a natural comedian, with sparkling comic timing, and towards the end of his career played Mr Grainger (previously played by the late <a href="https://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Arthur%20Brough" target="_blank">Arthur Brough</a>) in a one-off reboot of sitcom <a href="https://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/are-you-being-served-1972-1985.html" target="_blank">Are You Being Served?</a> Roy also received an MBE for services to drama and charity in 2006.<br />
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Roy Barraclough died in a hospice in Ashton-Under-Lyne after a short illness, on June 1st, 2017, aged 81. Coronation Street cast members attended his funeral in Oldham, including screen wife Julie Goodyear, who said: "I have no words to describe how devastated I feel. We kept in close touch and spoke to each other at least two or three times every week. I will treasure all the happy times we had working and laughing together. we were just like a married couple. Crazy, I know, but true!"<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roy Barraclough pictured in March 2016</td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-9709424120819826812018-01-04T11:56:00.001+00:002018-01-04T11:56:09.386+00:00Wallace Reid (1891-1923)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> William Wallace Halleck Reid<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> April 15th, 1891<br />
<b>Location:</b> St Louis, Missouri, USA<br />
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<b>Died:</b> January 18th, 1923<br />
<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Renal suppression and pneumonia caused by morphine addiction<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> American silent film star labelled "the screen's most perfect lover" by Motion Picture Magazine who appeared in more than 200 productions, including D W Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), as well as The World's Champion (1922) and Across the Continent (1922).<br />
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Born into a showbiz family (both his parents were actors or playwrights), Wallace Reid was an accomplished athlete and outdoorsman, but slipped into the film industry when his father began working for motion pictures rather than theatres. Wallace's first appearance on film was in the 1910 short The Phoenix, and although he initially preferred to remain behind the scenes, directing rather than acting, the studios soon latched onto his matinee idol looks and turned him into one of the greatest sex symbols of the silent era.<br />
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Nevertheless, between 1912 and 1917 Wallace directed a total of 69 productions, and wrote 26 scripts between 1912 and 1916. In 1913, while working for Universal Pictures, the 6ft 1in performer met the actress Dorothy Davenport, who he married the same year and had two children with (Wallace Jr, and Betty, who was adopted but who it is believed was Wallace's daughter via an affair).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wallace with his son Wallace Jr<br />at Christmastime</td></tr>
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His films were often action adventures in which he was paired with a beautiful young actress, such as Ann Little, in auto-thrillers such as The Roaring Road (1919), Excuse My Dust (1920) and Too Much Speed (1921). In early 1919 he was filming the romantic drama The Valley of the Giants in Humboldt County, California, with co-star Grace Darmond and director James Cruze. One day's shooting was on location in Oregon, and while en route to the location, Wallace was injured when the train he was travelling in careered off a bridge near Arcata in California, rolling 15ft and landing on its side. Wallace was seriously injured by a deep laceration to the scalp, a gash in his arm to the bone, and severe injury to his back.<br />
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In order to keep up with the filming schedule he was prescribed morphine for pain relief, but he soon became addicted to the drug. His addiction got worse and worse at a time when drug rehabilitation programmes were virtually non-existent, and the studios decided that the best way to preserve Wallace's box office bang was to feed him more and more morphine to keep him alive! His addiction ate into his health, and Wallace began to waste away, lose his teeth and become moodier.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 30-year-old Wallace Reid<br />in his final film, Thirty Days</td></tr>
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Being a young man, it's puzzling why Wallace struggled so much with his addiction, but it all begins to make sense when you consider one of the cures Wallace attempted while still at home. Called the Crebo Method, it involved a programme of daily injections, pills and enemas consisting of a cocktail of substances, including ephedrine, adrenaline, philocarpine hydrochloride, luminal and even a South American plant compound called curare which was used to poison arrow tips and asphyxiate and paralyze animals in the space of 120 seconds! All this was injected into Wallace's chest, leading to some nightmarish side effects, including exhaustion, twitching, cramping, thirst and dysentery.<br />
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While making his final film, Thirty Days (released in December 1922), Wallace was barely able to stand, let alone act, and reviews from the time describe him as looking tired and haggard (sadly, the film is now lost, so we can't see it for ourselves). Despite his condition, Wallace was cast in another film soon after, entitled Nobody's Money. Assistant director Henry Hathaway later recalled Wallace's last day on set: "He sort of fumbled about, and bumped into a chair, and then just sat down on the floor and started to cry. They put him in a chair, and he just keeled over. They sent for an ambulance and sent him to hospital."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wallace with his wife Dorothy, son<br />Wallace Jr and daughter Betty, circa 1921</td></tr>
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In and out of various sanitariums throughout his final years, when he was sent by a Dr C B Blessing to a hospital in LA, he told director Cecil B De Mille: "Either I'll come out cured, or I won't come out." Dr Blessing's method of attempting to "cure" Wallace consisted of a controversial mixture of other, unidentified pills, which essentially boiled down to getting him off one drug by getting him addicted to another. Wallace was there for six weeks until his wife Dorothy moved him to a private sanitarium where he was placed in a padded room to "dry out". His condition only worsened, via a series of influenzas, kidney failures and respiratory issues.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mrs Wallace Reid inspecting a fortune in<br />drugs and narcotics at the opening of her<br />film Human Wreckage in San Francisco<br />in the summer of 1923.</td></tr>
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Sadly, Wallace died of renal suppression and pneumonia in a sanitarium in LA while attempting to recover, on January 18th, 1923, cradled in his wife's arms. He was just 31 years old, and left a 27-year-old widow and two children, then aged six and four. He was interred at the Azalea Terrace of the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Pallbearers at his funeral included William Desmond, Noah Beery, Ed Brady, William S Hart, Eugene Pallette, Benny Frazee (Wallace's chauffeur), Victor H Clark, Jack Holt, Antonio Moreno, Conrad Nagel, Theodore Roberts and Sam Wood.<br />
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After Wallace's tragic early death, his widow Dorothy (as Mrs Wallace Reid) toured the US publicising the film Human Wreckage, released in June 1923 - just five months after his death - which told the tragic tale of drug addict Jimmy Brown, played by George Hackathorne. At the end of each performance of the film, Dorothy would address the audience directly, imploring them to help in her crusade to wipe out the menace of narcotics. Obviously, her mission was far from accomplished, and sadly no prints of this film are known to have survived.<br />
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Wallace appeared briefly in one film posthumously as one of many cameos in the now lost film Hollywood, released in August 1923 and also featuring Fatty Arbuckle, Mary Astor, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, ZaSu Pitts, Gloria Swanson and Ben Turpin.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wallace Reid's urn at Forest<br />Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery</td></tr>
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Wallace Reid received a commemorative star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in February 1960 (located at 6617 Hollywood Boulevard), while his widow Dorothy lived until October 1977, when she died of natural causes at the age of 82. She actually outlived her adopted daughter Betty Mummert, who died in early 1967, aged just 48. Wallace and Dorothy's only biological child, their son Wallace Jr, died in 1990, aged 73, after having appeared in a handful of films himself in the 1930s and 40s, and later forged a career as an architect of apartments and condos.<br />
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Wallace was recalled by co-stars and colleagues in the epic 1980 documentary series Hollywood, by Kevin Brownlow (episode 3: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKAq6trYuYs&list=PLPV3nUyTvwwrMC59RKPvaM-KYE9TnnOUk&index=3" target="_blank">Single Beds and Double Standards</a>), and in 2007, E J Fleming wrote an autobiography called Wallace Reid: Life and Death of a Hollywood Idol.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwlNlJc94k1t-0rXhTkwDNaUAo1CDsrWw5km6B7CaW7kBOSMiNQuxKtz3HISnrDPJPkeMyaKINtpCFE21TCqzgGzbQ0w1cAvMu_Nx-zexN4qoqdbO5tSz0BAPPGG45uexBkOuNSAff0Y/s1600/4b2a9b9ceb223ef8c8f5bb7cee73b56a--vintage-film-silent-film.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="416" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwlNlJc94k1t-0rXhTkwDNaUAo1CDsrWw5km6B7CaW7kBOSMiNQuxKtz3HISnrDPJPkeMyaKINtpCFE21TCqzgGzbQ0w1cAvMu_Nx-zexN4qoqdbO5tSz0BAPPGG45uexBkOuNSAff0Y/s320/4b2a9b9ceb223ef8c8f5bb7cee73b56a--vintage-film-silent-film.jpg" width="221" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wallace pictured in 1912 (aged just 21) in<br />a publicity still for a Western short.</td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-11655000056580987392016-11-10T11:11:00.002+00:002018-01-04T09:29:55.080+00:00Margaret Lockwood (1916-1990)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> Margaret Mary Day Lockwood<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> September 15th, 1916<br />
<b>Location:</b> Karachi, British India<br />
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<b>Died:</b> July 15th, 1990<br />
<b>Location:</b> London, UK<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Cirrhosis of the liver<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> British film starlet who found fame in the 1930s and 40s in films such as Lorna Doone (1934), Doctor Syn (1937), Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), The Wicked Lady (1945) and Jassy (1947). She was nominated for a Best British Actress BAFTA for her role in 1955's Cast a Dark Shadow, but lost out to Katie Johnson for The Ladykillers.<br />
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Margaret's success in films both in the UK and the US is undeniable, shifting her screen image from lead starlet to darker, villainous roles in the post-war years. However, as she approached her 40th birthday, her popularity began to wane, so instead she turned to the stage and television screen to sustain her career.<br />
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Her first work for TV was actually playing the title role in H G Wells' Ann Veronica for the BBC's Sunday Night Theatre in June 1952, followed by Lady Cicely Wayneflete in an adaptation of Captain Brassbound's Conversion for the BBC in March 1953. Other small-screen roles were to follow - in 1955 she played Clarissa Hailsham-Brown in an hour-long excerpt of the play Spider's Web, recorded by the BBC at the Savoy Theatre in London, after which she regularly appeared on TV in productions such as Murder Mistaken (1956), Call It a Day (1956) and the major 10-part BBC series The Royalty, about events at an exclusive London hotel, in which she played Mollie Miller (1957-58).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Margaret in series 3 of<br />
Justice (1974), aged 57</td></tr>
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Her first major TV highlight was playing Mollie Manning in 24 episodes of the BBC's The Flying Swan, which was inspired by The Royalty and involved events in a hotel once again - this time co-starring Margaret's daughter Julia, aged 23. The Flying Swan debuted in March 1965, when Margaret was 48, and ran for 24 episodes until September 1965.<br />
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After this, Margaret's screen appearances became few and far between. In 1970, aged 56, she played Louise Harrington in a BBC adaptation of Peter Shaffer's Five Finger Exercise, and in June 1974 was a participant in the TV detective panel game Whodunnit?.<br />
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Her final TV work was her second greatest small-screen hit. In July 1969 she appeared in an ITV play called Justice is a Woman, playing barrister Julia Stanford, and this in turn inspired Yorkshire TV's series Justice, which ran for three series and 39 episodes between October 1971 and August 1974. In this, Margaret played Northern barrister Harriet Peterson.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In her final film role as the<br />
Stepmother in The Slipper and<br />
the Rose (1976)</td></tr>
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When Justice ended, there were just two more projects left for Margaret before she retired from acting for good. Her final hoorah to the silver screen was playing the wicked Stepmother in Bryan Forbes's musical adaptation of The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella, released in April 1976, when Margaret was 59. There was a star-studded cast, including Richard Chamberlain, Annette Crosbie, Gemma Craven, Edith Evans, Michael Hordern, Kenneth More and Rosalind Ayres - this film would also be the final film roles for More and Evans. The film was a great success, garnering an Oscar nomination for the Sherman Brothers' songs, and in March 1976 the film was chosen for that year's Royal Command Performance, after which the attendant Queen Mother told the Shermans: "The waltz you wrote for the ballroom scene is the most beautiful song I've ever heard."<br />
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Margaret's very last acting credit was playing Queen Alexandra in Royce Ryton's play Motherdear at the Ambassador's Theatre in London in 1980. It ran for just six weeks.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Margaret appeared on friend Tony<br />
Britton's This is Your Life in<br />
January 1977, aged 60</td></tr>
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That might have been the last the world saw of Margaret's acting prowess, but she continued to appear as herself on TV into the 1980s, including the quiz show Celebrity Squares (1975), Saturday Night at the Mill (1980) and the nostalgia-based panel show Looks Familiar (1974, 1975 and her final screen appearance of all, on July 20th, 1982, when she was 64). She also appeared on three editions of This is Your Life to pay tribute to celebrity friends - Phyllis Calvert in 1972, Tony Britton in 1977 and Stewart Granger in 1980.<br />
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One of her very final public appearances was in 1980 to accept the honour of a CBE from the Queen, which she had been awarded in the New Year's Honours List. She attended Buckingham Palace with her three grandchildren. After this, she became something of a recluse, living in a stylish cul-de-sac in Kingston Upon Thames and rejecting all invitations and offers of work - for instance, she declined an invitation to attend the premiere of Michael Winner's remake of The Wicked Lady in 1983, as she had appeared in the original.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of her very last screen appearances<br />
on Saturday Night at the Mill in<br />
April 1980, aged 63</td></tr>
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In an interview with a newspaper in 1990 (not long before her mother's death), Julia said: "My mother is a bit like Greta Garbo in a way. Although she still gets offers, she doesn't act any more. She won't even go out or give interviews. I wish she had remarried because I would like her to have a companion in her old age. Although she's a recluse we all see her as much as possible. Mum loves movies, but gets so upset when she sees a star she has admired for years and notices they've had ten face-lifts!"<br />
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For much of her later life, Margaret suffered from labyrinthitis (vestibular neuritis), a form of inner ear infection which affected her balance. A lifelong chain smoker, she passed away at the age of 73 of cirrhosis of the liver at Cromwell Hospital in Kensington, and her body was cremated at Putney Vale.<br />
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Here's footage from 1946, when Margaret was 30 years old, of her (rather emotionally) receiving her Daily Mail Film Award for Best Actress ("Tonight is the proudest moment of my film career")...<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-64922143997304631822016-09-30T14:48:00.002+01:002016-11-10T09:31:34.273+00:00Marlon Brando (1924-2004)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> Marlon Brando Jr<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> April 3rd, 1924<br />
<b>Location:</b> Omaha, Nebraska, USA<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> July 1st, 2004<br />
<b>Location:</b> Westwood, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Respiratory failure<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> Legendary American performer often cited as the greatest actor of all time, and an influence on generations of performers to come. He was nominated eight times for an Oscar, winning two - for On the Waterfront in 1955 and The Godfather in 1973 (although Marlon refused this award due to the poor treatment of American Indians in the entertainment industry). He also won five Golden Globes, a Primetime Emmy and three BAFTAs. His iconic status as a legend in film history will last forever, thanks to films such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Wild One (1953), On the Waterfront (1954), The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979).<br />
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Everybody knows how great Marlon was in his prime in the 1950s and 60s, his legendary status as a principal icon of American film history meaning that most people know something about his career when it was at its height. And most people know that Marlon put on a great deal of weight as he entered old age. But what exactly did this Hollywood icon do in his latter years?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marlon, aged 74, in Free Money (1998)</td></tr>
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Well, throughout the 1990s, Marlon's film appearances became fewer and far between, with his last regular film being Free Money, released in December 1998. This $30m comedy crime caper co-starred Donald Sutherland, Charlie Sheen and Mira Sorvino and saw Marlon play Sven "The Swede" Sorenson, a prison jailer who murders convicts who escape and is being investigated by the FBI. Marlon was 74 years old and had put on a huge amount of weight by this point. Free Money would be his penultimate film role.<br />
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His final film was 2001's $68m The Score, co-starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Angela Bassett, with Marlon playing Max, a friend of De Niro's character. Max tempts Nick out of his retirement from a life of crime for one last job. In the final scene of the film, Max was supposed to smile, but Marlon refused, and so the effect had to be augmented using CGI. By many accounts, the 77-year-old Marlon was not the easiest to work with on set, as he took to disparaging remarks about director Frank Oz, leading to De Niro having to direct Marlon's scenes.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marlon in his final film, The<br />
Score, in 2001, aged 77</td></tr>
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There are also reports that Marlon walked around the set naked between takes due to the heat of the Montreal location (which can't have been a pretty sight!), and that he pulled a number of practical jokes involving a remote-controlled whoopee cushion! If you want to see Marlon and De Niro improvise one scene from The Score over three takes, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI0l2BPGHRQ" target="_blank">click here</a>.<br />
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However, The Score was not intended to be Marlon's final film, as he was to play Father McFeely in Scary Movie 2 (2001), but when he was hospitalised with pneumonia in April 2001, the role was taken by James Woods (Marlon was due to receive $2m for four days work). Further near misses include playing Paul Rayburn in 2004's Man on Fire (a role taken by Christopher Walken) and the voice of Mrs Sour in the never-completed Big Bug Man (Marlon recorded the voice in June 2004, just weeks before his death, but the film has never been completed or released in any form since).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marlon with Michael Jackson,<br />
who became a good friend of the<br />
actor's in his latter years</td></tr>
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Many people may not know that the very last acting appearance Marlon Brando made was in the music video for Michael Jackson's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-7ABIM2qjU" target="_blank">You Rock My World</a>, released in September 2001. Marlon played the boss of a nightclub who briefly faces off against Jackson, and there were apparently plans for Marlon to appear in future Jackson videos. The two were friends, but unfortunately Jackson's professional problems with his record company, and his personal setbacks to an extent, meant there were no more music videos of this kind from the Invincible album. However, Marlon did make a personal appearance at Jackson's 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City in September, 2001 (and was paid $1m to do so), speaking (somewhat unpopularly) about humanitarianism.<br />
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In November 2001 Marlon filmed a series of documentaries called Lying for a Living in which he gave acting lessons to 20 student actors and a handful of stars such as Nick Nolte, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jon Voight, Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Jackson, Peter Coyote, Harry Dean Stanton, Edward James Olmos, Philippe Petit, Robin Williams and Sean Penn, with the intention of selling them on DVD on the shopping channel QVC, but the finished DVDs never came to fruition. <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/marlon-brandos-real-last-tango-801232" target="_blank">However, you can read about some of the bizarre goings-on that happened over that 10-day period here</a>, including Brando in drag and also dressed as Osama bin Laden!<br />
<br />
Aside from Marlon's voice work for the elusive Big Bug Man, he also recorded a few lines for The Godfather video game, released in March 2006. However, due to Marlon's health, only one recording session made it into the final game as the oxygen tank he needed to breathe was audible on the track for other sessions. The only scene which uses Marlon's new vocals is the scene in the hospital, where he speaks about Sollozzo.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marlon pictured leaving UCLA Medical<br />
Center in March 2003, aged 79</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Marlon's friend George Englund said that the star told him a couple of years before his death that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offered him a Lifetime Achievement Oscar on the condition that he attend the ceremony to personally accept the award. Marlon refused, believing that the offer should not be conditional, and that the condition that he appear on the televised ceremony showed the Academy was not primarily focused on honouring artistic excellence.<br />
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Marlon had been putting on weight since the 1960s, and by the age of 70 he reportedly weighed 300lbs (136kg/ 21.4 stone) and suffered from Type 2 diabetes. Marlon's son Miko was a bodyguard for Michael Jackson and said that one of the last times his father left the house (Summer 2003) was to spend time with Jackson at Neverland. "He loved it. He had a 24-hour chef, 24-hour security, 24-hour help, 24-hour kitchen, 24-hour maid service," said Miko. "Michael Jackson was instrumental in helping my father through the last years of his life and for that I will always be indebted to him. Dad had a hard time breathing in his final days and was on oxygen much of the time. He loved the outdoors so Michael would invite him over to Neverland... but being on oxygen it was hard for dad to get around, it's such a big place. So Michael got dad a golf cart with a portable oxygen tank so he could enjoy Neverland."<br />
<br />
In 2004 Marlon signed a deal with Tunisian director Ridha Behi for a project entitled Brando and Brando, and work on the script ran right up to a week before Marlon's death, with a projected filming date for July or August 2004. The project eventually became Citizen Brando aka Always Brando, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the last photos taken of Marlon,<br />
in March 2004, aged 79</td></tr>
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On July 1st, 2004, Marlon Brando died of respiratory failure from pulmonary fibrosis with congestive heart failure at UCLA Medical Center in California. He was 80 years old, and left behind 14 children (two more predeceased him) and more than 30 grandchildren. Marlon also suffered from failing eyesight caused by diabetes and liver cancer. There were reports that just weeks prior to his death, Marlon had refused permission to have oxygen tubes inserted into his lungs, said to be the only way to save his life.<br />
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Marlon Brando was cremated and his ashes put with those of his childhood friends Wally Cox (1924-1973) and Sam Gilman. The ashes were partly scattered in his beloved Tahiti and partly in Death Valley. Marlon had taken possession of Cox's ashes from his widow with the intention of scattering them at sea, but actually kept them locked away in a closet at his house, and frequently spoke to Wally in the subsequent decades. Marlon even kept the pajamas Wally died in.<br />
<br />
Those final lines spoken by Brando in The Godfather video game - which he recorded virtually on his death bed, as was the character - can be heard here...<br />
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But more cheerily, here's footage of Brando screen-testing for Rebel Without a Cause and simply oozing charisma from every fibre of his existence... (to see a James Dean screen-test for the film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zUb3NRUQRM" target="_blank">click here</a> - towards the end, you can see why Jimmy may have won the role).<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-34866089444193361312016-09-07T13:31:00.002+01:002016-09-07T13:37:42.948+01:00Hattie Jacques (1922-1980)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlH77Exfhx_7sa1ETh6cXThxE9qaTf_avHe_mQ7H6uTCnN3asA6uOdc-8Mn6PoUDAkQ05ltPkXnfqEunweXLYcwXod7EqW01n-ui7f_Bm15EXQ1Vg9Hs7SlqUREPhA8aVfZdLWkMCnGQ8/s1600/nanny-300x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlH77Exfhx_7sa1ETh6cXThxE9qaTf_avHe_mQ7H6uTCnN3asA6uOdc-8Mn6PoUDAkQ05ltPkXnfqEunweXLYcwXod7EqW01n-ui7f_Bm15EXQ1Vg9Hs7SlqUREPhA8aVfZdLWkMCnGQ8/s200/nanny-300x300.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> Josephine Edwina Jaques<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> February 7th, 1922<br />
<b>Location:</b> Sandgate, Kent, UK<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> October 6th, 1980<br />
<b>Location:</b> Kensington, London, UK<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> Larger than life comedy actress who is most famous for being part of the repertory company of actors who made up the Carry On film franchise team, in particular playing Matron in the various hospital-themed installments. Between 1949-1965 Hattie was married to fellow actor John Le Mesurier (best known as Sergeant Wilson in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army).<br />
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Hattie had enjoyed a successful career almost constantly since the late 1940s, both as part of the Carry On team and outside of it. Although she appeared in a total of 14 Carry On films between 1958-1974, she also had great success alongside comedy actor and writer Eric Sykes in his various TV shows, including 59 episodes of Sykes and a... (1960-65), The Plank (1967) and 68 episodes of Sykes (1972-79). She also worked with Tony Hancock and Frankie Howerd, and appeared in 26 episodes of a now largely forgotten sitcom called Our House (1960-62), co-starring the likes of Norman Rossington and <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/charles-hawtrey-1914-1988.html" target="_blank">Charles Hawtrey</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hattie, aged 50, playing the<br />
formidable Floella in Carry<br />
On Abroad (1972)</td></tr>
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Most of Hattie's final decade was taken up professionally by the aforementioned Sykes sitcom and her Carry On commitments (as well as the films, Hattie also appeared in a 1972 Carry On Christmas special and a 1975 episode of the Carry On Laughing TV series). Other projects in the 1970s included episodes of the TV series Catweazle (1970) and Doctor At Large (1971), the children's adventure film Danger Point (1971), and the bawdy comedy film Three for All (1975).<br />
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Hattie's role in Carry On Abroad (released December 1972) was markedly reduced in comparison to her earlier franchise appearances, and during post-production the film's insurers became concerned about Hattie's deteriorating health and subsequently told producer Peter Rogers they would be unwilling to insure her on future Carry On films. Nevertheless, Hattie did make one other Carry On film appearance, in 1974's Carry On Dick.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hattie's brief cameo as an airport<br />
security official in Three for<br />
All (1975)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The year 1974 was not a great one for Hattie. Her sons Robin (then aged 21) and Kim (aged 18) were both arrested and charged with the possession of cannabis, and her house searched by police. This happened the same week she was told she was in the running for an OBE in the Queen's Honours List, but to avoid further press intrusion for her sons, she declined the offer. Robin and Kim were eventually fined £20 each. Robin went on to forge a successful career as a session guitarist; however, Kim had a more tragic demise...<br />
<br />
In the autumn of 1974 Hattie suffered a cancer scare and lost a considerable amount of weight. She completed filming of the third series of Sykes, and in early December underwent surgery at Charing Cross Hospital for what turned out to be benign tumours on her kidneys.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hattie pictured on March 23rd,<br />
1977, aged 55</td></tr>
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Between 1976-79 Hattie took part in a number of stage tours of the Sykes sitcom with Eric Sykes. It visited places in the UK (including Torquay, Lincoln and Bournemouth) as well as overseas, such as Hong Kong (1977), Rhodesia and Australia (1978), Canada (1978-79) and South Africa (1979). It was while visiting Blackpool in 1977 that Hattie's health became problematic as she suffered from arthritis and ulcerated legs and had to have her legs bandaged every day. She was given a ground floor dressing room so she could avoid stairs, but Sykes misread this as an attempt by Hattie to get preferential treatment, and relations between the two became strained. While touring the show in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Sykes made accusations of her behaving unprofessionally, and by the time the tour reached Brighton in 1979 the relationship between the two was rapidly deteriorating, despite mutual admiration in public.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hattie in the final episode of<br />
Sykes in November, 1979</td></tr>
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Hattie's final appearance in Sykes was the episode The BBC Honours Sykes, co-starring Les Dawson and Hugh Burden, broadcast on November 16th, 1979. The last shot of Hattie is of her walking out of the office of the Head of BBC Light Entertainment - how fitting! It's a pity she has next to nothing to say or do in the episode though.<br />
<br />
Soon after this Hattie was one of the guests paying tribute to Eric Sykes on a special edition of This is Your Life dedicated to him and broadcast on Christmas Day, 1979. In his autobiography, Eric wrote: "My darling television sister Hattie was there – in fact my life wouldn't have been the same without her. What a fitting way to end the programme."<br />
<br />
Hattie's very last professional work was also an Eric Sykes project, the 28-minute comedy short Rhubarb Rhubarb, made for Thames Television and broadcast on December 15th, 1980 - just over two months after her death. It was a remake of Sykes's 1969 original, and Hattie reprised her role as the Nanny, with co-stars Bob Todd, Jimmy Edwards, Beryl Reid, Charlie Drake, Bill Fraser, Roy Kinnear and many more.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hattie on Eric Sykes's<br />
This is Your Life,<br />
December 1979</td></tr>
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By October 1980 Hattie's weight had risen considerably (reportedly to around 20 stone (130kg)), and she was struggling with breathing problems. She was admitted to Charing Cross Hospital for treatment, but took a weekend break from hospital and returned to her home on Eardley Crescent, Kensington, where she died of a heart attack and kidney failure on October 6th. She was 58.<br />
<br />
Hattie's funeral was held at Putney Vale crematorium, and her ashes scattered there. Eric Sykes was refused permission to attend by her sons as they were unhappy at the way their mother had been treated. On November 10th, a memorial service was held at St Paul's in Covent Garden (aka the Actors' Church), described by Carry On co-star Kenneth Williams in his diary: "It was very full. The choir sang Hattie's favourite songs, then John Le Mesurier talked about Hat and her varied activities (she was a welder in a factory during the war!) and then after a hymn I spoke about my work with her, and finished mentioning the line 'Sweet as a kiss on a winter's day' from the record she gave me, and the George Eliot* quote about 'the comfort of feeling safe with a person'.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hattie during an interview with Russell<br />
Goodrick in 1978 when she was visiting<br />
Perth in Australia on tour</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 2011, Hattie's son Robin said in an interview with the Daily Express: "I gather Mum had told a few people she wasn't long for this world but I wasn't one of them. She was quiet about her health – she'd had cancer scares and wouldn't admit to them. When I'd spoken to her that June, I said I was planning to get married in England that October, and she said 'No, get married now'. which, on reflection, was ominous. I did as she asked, but in Los Angeles in August, and Mum was sadly unable to make it, I believe because of work. Not long after, she died. When I heard the news it felt as if something had been torn out of me. And it was very difficult because I was in LA. I arrived in London two days later and stayed for two weeks and it rained every single day except the day of the funeral, which was cold but beautiful. Someone like your mum is irreplaceable."<br />
<br />
Robin's brother Kim (aka Jake) died in 1991, after becoming a heroin addict. Robin said: "The day before Mum died Jake had an argument with her. That affected him really badly. We became closer and talked a lot. It's strange that he died on the 11th anniversary of Mum's death but I believe that was just a coincidence."<br />
<br />
<i>* Not actually an Eliot quote, but from Dinah Maria Mulock's A Life for a Life (1859).</i><br />
<br />
<b>A bit of fun:</b> On February 12th, 1963 Hattie was the star of her own This is Your Life, hosted by Eamonn Andrews:<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-81127661305891260982016-09-07T10:28:00.003+01:002016-09-30T12:20:29.872+01:00Clark Gable (1901-1960)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguUJ0GFn-OMpgEwUxunf14x0JJnGnoWrIZh-gAk-GFRppIVcHRdDQRvnmdORdMzx1shvygdDvARXwd0-TSx2f-5rxHkwxUzClqLqEVB2EbBdLDHTdT50u0i0AUhbOwzhzUr-EgM5CiZ3Q/s1600/Clark-Gable4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguUJ0GFn-OMpgEwUxunf14x0JJnGnoWrIZh-gAk-GFRppIVcHRdDQRvnmdORdMzx1shvygdDvARXwd0-TSx2f-5rxHkwxUzClqLqEVB2EbBdLDHTdT50u0i0AUhbOwzhzUr-EgM5CiZ3Q/s200/Clark-Gable4.jpg" width="149" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> William Clark Gable<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> February 1st, 1901<br />
<b>Location:</b> Cadiz, Ohio, USA<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> November 16th, 1960<br />
<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Coronary thrombosis<br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> Oscar-winning actor who was a matinee idol of both the silent and sound era, starting out in small parts in the 1920s before securing roles in classic films such as It Happened One Night (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Saratoga (1937). It is his iconic role as Rhett Butler in 1939's Gone with the Wind which secured his legendary status, after which he appeared in various war and Western films. He won an Oscar for Best Actor for It Happened One Night (beating Frank Morgan and William Powell) and was nominated for a further two (for Mutiny on the Bounty and Gone with the Wind). He was also nominated for two Golden Globes. He was married five times, most famously to the actress Carole Lombard, who died in an airplane crash in 1942.<br />
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In the 1950s, times were hard at Clark's home studio, MGM, thanks to the advent and success of television, and plummeting movie revenues. Many MGM execs were fired (including Louis B Mayer in 1951), and a number of stars considered to have excessive salaries were let go too, including Judy Garland and Greer Garson. Although Clark was not one of these stars, his salary was deemed excessive, and when his contract came up for renewal in 1953, he decided to go his own, independent way.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clark on March 26th, 1958, presenting<br />
at the Oscars at Hollywood's Pantages <br />
Theater. He was 57 years old here.</td></tr>
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In the final seven years of his life and career Clark made a good few films that were profitable and decent, including Soldier of Fortune and The Tall Men - both released in 1955, the year he decided to set up his own production company with the actress Jane Russell. The result was 1956's The King and Four Queens, but this became his only independent production, as he found the combination of producing and acting too taxing. He was also seen to be developing a tremor, particularly visible in long takes (there have been suggestions that he was developing Parkinson's Disease, but this is unsubstantiated).<br />
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Clark's penultimate film project was It Started in Naples, released in August 1960 and co-starring Sophia Loren. Filmed in Rome, Naples and Capri, it became the last of Clark's films to be released in his lifetime.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clark with Marilyn Monroe, his co-star<br />
in The Misfits (1960). The film would<br />
be the last for them both.</td></tr>
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On February 8th, 1960, at the age of 59, Clark received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1608 Vine Street. That Autumn, Clark began filming the John Huston Western epic The Misfits, co-starring Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. The location was the boiling hot Nevada Desert, where temperatures reached 108 (42) degrees. Clark, playing Gay Langland, insisted on doing some of his own stunts, including being dragged 400ft across a dry lake bed at over 30mph. Filming ended on November 4th, 1960 - just 12 days before Clark's last day on Earth.<br />
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On November 5th Clark suffered agonising chest pains while changing the tyre on his Jeep at home, and retired to bed early on his wife Kay's orders after the pain had subsided. He suffered further headaches and restlessness through the night, and finally got up at 7.15am the following day. When he tried to dress himself, he was wracked with pain once more.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clark at the press conference<br />
for The Misfits, 1960</td></tr>
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Clark had suffered a heart attack and was sent to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, in Los Angeles. The following day press reports claimed the star's condition was satisfactory - he was prescribed anti-coagulants and sedatives and was under constant supervision. By the morning of November 16th (ten days after being hospitalised), medics believed he was on the mend. However, by the evening his condition took a turn for the worse. Kay went to bed in the adjoining hospital room at 10.30pm, and at 10.50pm Clark finished reading his book, put back his head, and silently passed away. Doctors did not perform CPR for fear of rupturing his heart, and Kay hugged his body for two hours until she allowed medics to attend to him.<br />
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What caused this sudden decline in Clark's health - between filming in baking heat in the desert to being hospitalised with a heart condition - is unclear. It could have been the stress of filming in such inhospitable locations, or his insistence on performing his own stunts. Or it could have been to do with the crash diet Clark went on prior to filming The Misfits, which saw him drop from 230lbs (104kg) to 195lbs (88kg), along with an over-consumption of Dexedrine pills.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mourners outside the Church of the Recessional on November 20th<br />
1960. Newsreel footage shows the arrival of stars such as Frank Capra,<br />
Roy Rogers, James Stewart and Spencer Tracy. Clark's wife Kay is<br />
pictured centre, in black.</td></tr>
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On November 20th, Clark's bronze $4,000 casket graced a private service attended by 200 people (including Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/james-stewart-1908-1997.html" target="_blank">James Stewart</a>, Norma Shearer, Robert Stack and Van Johnson) at the Church of the Recessional in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, where he was buried beside his third wife Carole Lombard, and eventually his fifth wife Kay (she died in 1983).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Clark Gable pictured<br />
in 2008, aged 47</td></tr>
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The curse of The Misfits did not end there either. The filming had been the battleground for the collapse of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller's marriage, so the die was already cast on that score (they divorced in January 1961). Clark's co-stars also suffered premature deaths - Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962, and Montgomery Clift in July 1966. Supporting actor Thelma Ritter died of a heart attack in February 1969, and James Barton died in February 1962. It even stretched to behind the cameras, as film editor George Tomasini died in November 1964.<br />
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On the up side, on March 20th, 1961 - just over five months after Clark died - his wife Kay Williams gave birth to his only son, John, at the same hospital where his father had died.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-40778443067134525172016-08-24T12:15:00.001+01:002016-08-25T14:34:15.319+01:00Bette Davis (1908-1989)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw2BCXjfNUvwoNKOhM7SHR847LQ_KnyxCrPnzhn1U_G5afH6JHM2aZ409VtmdbF-_EjestQ8HOoi0hV_2J7FTPtQMKyE-DA14wrv2SjYr0QaLMBR0_RhV0vW-ANCBH2dJN91pwhsTb3XM/s1600/bd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw2BCXjfNUvwoNKOhM7SHR847LQ_KnyxCrPnzhn1U_G5afH6JHM2aZ409VtmdbF-_EjestQ8HOoi0hV_2J7FTPtQMKyE-DA14wrv2SjYr0QaLMBR0_RhV0vW-ANCBH2dJN91pwhsTb3XM/s200/bd.jpg" width="158" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> Ruth Elizabeth Davis<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> April 5th, 1908<br />
<b>Location:</b> Lowell, Massachusetts, USA<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> October 6th, 1989<br />
<b>Location:</b> Neuilly-sur-Seine, France<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Breast cancer<br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> Actress who became one of the most successful and revered in Hollywood history, being nominated for 11 Oscars (and winning two, for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1939)), three Golden Globes (and being awarded the Cecil B DeMille Award in 1974) and four Emmys (winning one, for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter in 1979). In 1999 the American Film Institute named her the second greatest female actor of the 20th century (after Katharine Hepburn).<br />
<br />
By 1980, the year Bette turned 72, big-screen leading roles had all but dried out. As with so many stars of the classic era of Hollywood, Bette turned to television, and made a good many TV movies in her final decade, including the Emmy-nominated White Mama (1980) and A Piano for Mrs Cimino (1982). These projects were almost always well-received, and Bette appeared in an average of one every year until ill-health really took its debilitating effect.<br />
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Bette as Libby Strong in The</div>
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Whales of August, aged 79</div>
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Bette's last two projects were actually cinematic rather than televisual. In Lindsay Anderson's The Whales of August, Bette played Libby Strong, elderly sister to <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/lillian-gish-1893-1993.html" target="_blank">Lillian Gish</a>'s Sarah Webber. Bette was 79 by this point, and Gish was 94, but plenty of other elderly actors had turned down parts in the film, often due to infirmity - Shirley Booth (then 89), Barbara Stanwyck (80), Frances Dee (78) and Katharine Hepburn (80), as well as <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/fred-astaire-1899-1987.html" target="_blank">Fred Astaire</a> (88), Paul Henreid (79), Joel McCrea (82) and <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/john-gielgud-1904-2000.html" target="_blank">John Gielgud</a> (83).<br />
<br />
The filming of The Whales of August, on Cliff Island in the Gulf of Maine, was not a happy one, as the formidable Bette tried to insist on top billing, above Gish, who found the demands unpleasant, and said: "I don't care what they do with my name. If they leave it off, so much the better. It's the work I love, not the glory." Bette finally secured leftmost billing, but slightly lower than Gish on the right. Gish claimed that Bette refused to look at or speak to her during filming, except when the script required it. On the flipside, Bette reported that she was unhappy with Gish missing her cues because she was deaf. The film opened in October 1987 and was a critical hit but commercial failure.<br />
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Bette, aged 78, at the</div>
<div>
1986 Golden Globes</div>
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Bette's final screen acting role was in Wicked Stepmother (filmed in 1988 but released in February 1989), co-starring Barbara Carrera. Director Larry Cohen first thought of Bette for the role when he saw her at the 1986 Golden Globe Awards. In 2012, he wrote: "My heart went out to the outrageous lady with partial facial paralysis who limped on to stage [reportedly barely 80lbs in weight]. Certainly it was a shocking sight to behold. But once Bette started to speak, she was unmistakably the brilliant Queen of Warner Bros. As of that night, I was determined to create a project that would bring Bette back. And I wouldn't give up until she agreed to do it."<br />
<br />
Bette and Carrera play mother/ daughter witches who share just the one human body; while one is corporeal, the other must live in a cat. A strange set-up, but there was a good reason for this scenario. A week into filming, in April 1988, Bette reportedly stormed off set, never to return, as she was unhappy with the scripts and the way she was being photographed. The script had to be hastily reworked to accommodate the loss (although Cohen did consider recasting, with <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/lucille-ball-1911-1989.html" target="_blank">Lucille Ball</a> as Miranda Pierpoint, but it was a good job he didn't as Ball herself died in April 1989, predeceasing Bette!).<br />
<br />
Bette's displeasure with the picture was the accepted truth for years, until in 2012 Cohen set the record straight in an article for Film Comment, in which he said that she actually left the set for a dental appointment after her bridgework cracked. He wrote: "Knowing it would delay the picture, Bette tried to fake it and failed. She could barely get the lines out because of the necessary pauses to readjust the bridge with her tongue."<br />
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Bette as she appeared in her</div>
<div>
swansong, Wicked Stepmother</div>
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In June 1988, Bette was required to testify under oath at a deposition so that the insurance company could accurately assign blame for the shutdown and delay of the film. Cohen said: "And to her credit, she finally owned up to the truth and completely absolved me of any responsibility for her premature departure." To read Cohen's full and fascinating account of the making of Wicked Stepmother, and his friendship with Bette, <a href="http://www.filmcomment.com/article/i-killed-bette-davis/" target="_blank">click here</a>.<br />
<br />
In the surviving scenes (which total around 11 minutes), Bette looks tired, ill and disinterested - not the best swansong for a Hollywood legend at all. Reportedly, female impersonator Michael Greer dubbed in some of Bette's lines after she walked out.<br />
<br />
Bette had been plagued by ill-health for most of her final years. In 1983, aged 75, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. However, within a fortnight of the surgery, she suffered four strokes which paralysed the left side of her face and her left arm, leaving her with slurred speech. An intense programme of physiotherapy saw her recover somewhat, but her 100-a-day cigarette addiction did not help matters at all.<br />
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Bette in one of her final TV interviews,</div>
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on the Letterman show in April 1989</div>
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In January 1989, Bette collapsed while appearing at the 6th Annual American Cinema Awards, later discovering that her cancer had returned. That year she made personal appearances on two chat shows, Late Night with Letterman (April 20th) and Today (April 21st). Days later, she was honoured with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Annual Gala Tribute.<br />
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She recovered her health enough to fly to the Basque Country in Spain to be honoured at the Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival in late September, but during her time there, her health deteriorated once more and she was too ill to fly back to the USA. Her lawyer, Harold Schiff, said: "The doctors told us the cancer had spread, that it was terminal. The doctors had said let her go on going about her business."<br />
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She flew to the French commune of Neuilly-sur-Seine, just west of France, where she passed away at the American Hospital of Paris at 11.20pm on October 6th, 1989. She was 81 years old. She was interred at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles beside her mother and sister (but with her own name in larger type!).<br />
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Half of her near-$1m estate was left to her carer and physiotherapist, Kathryn Sermak, and the other half to her son, Michael Merrill. Her daughters and grandchildren were left out of the will (dated September 1987). Bette had been estranged from her daughter Barbara since 1985 when she'd written a tell-all book about her mother that caused some controversy. But that's another story...!<br />
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<b>A bit of fun:</b> In 1933, when Bette was 25 years old and already riding on the success of her debut in The Bad Sister, she took part in a commercial for General Electric kitchen appliances, made in collaboration with Warner Bros and co-starring other names such as Dick Powell and William Warren.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-18242554633420477272016-08-22T11:32:00.001+01:002016-08-22T11:32:02.694+01:00Tarzan - Part 5 (The 1980s)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Character's first film appearance:</b> Tarzan of the Apes (released January 27th, 1918)<br />
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<b>Character description:</b> Tarzan - aka John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke - is a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his novel Tarzan of the Apes in 1912. He was a feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani great apes after being separated from his parents when their ship was marooned off the African coast by mutineers. As an adult he experiences modern civilisation for the first time, largely rejecting it and choosing to remain in the wild as a heroic adventurer.</div>
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This is the fifth in a multi-part entry charting what happened to the various actors who have played Tarzan over the years. <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">Click here for the silent era (1918-1929)</a>, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-2-1932-1948.html" target="_blank">click here for the 1930s and 1940s (1932-1948)</a>, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">click here for the 1950s</a>, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/tarzan-part-4-1962-1972.html" target="_blank">click here for 1962-72</a>, or read on to find about the Tarzans from the 1980s...</div>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Miles O'Keeffe</span></u></b> (born Frank Miles O'Keeffe)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1981</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> June 20th, 1954</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Ripley, Tennessee, USA</div>
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The running theme with Tarzan actors is that they started out as ace sportsmen, and occasionally soldiers, and the same is not different for the first Tarzan of the 1980s. Miles was a star football athlete who attended the United States Air Force Academy and played halfback on the freshman football team in 1972, when he was 18. After a transfer to Mississippi, he bulked up to 240lb (110kg). Miles later became a physical fitness instructor in the Tennessee penal system before getting cast as Tarzan.<br />
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Miles, aged 51, as Ed Janzer in 2005's</div>
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The Unknown (aka Clawed)</div>
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But Tarzan, the Ape Man (released in August 1981, when Miles was 27) was originally going to be a vehicle for Bo Derek, in a script conjured up by co-writer Gary Goddard based upon the Marvel Comics character Dazzler. This idea was dropped, and Bo was then cast in an attempt to foreground Tarzan's Girl Friday, Jane Porter, called Me, Jane. This project eventually became Tarzan, the Ape Man, but even that was not to have originally starred Miles, who was only upgraded to the title role when the actor originally cast was fired (or quit, depending on who you listen to). The 6ft 3in Miles had been the lead's stunt double, and benefitted from this misfortune.<br />
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The film was universally panned and received six nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards (including one for Worst Actor for Miles, and another for Worst Actress for Bo Derek, which she won). Despite this, the film was a box office hit, costing $6.5m to make, and taking back $36.6m.<br />
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Miles, aged 56, in his most recent role</div>
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as Wild Bill in King of the Road (2010)</div>
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Tarzan typecast Miles as a "hunky action hero", and he became particularly associated with the character of Ator, very similar to Arnie's Conan the Barbarian, in a series of three Italian-made sword and sorcery films between 1982-87. Miles appeared in a great number of lower budget action films in the 1980s, including Hell's Heroes (1987) and Phantom Raiders (1988), and this continued throughout the 1990s in productions such as Murder, She Wrote (1993), Pocahontas: The Legend (1995), Escape to Grizzly Mountain (2000) and Fatal Conflict (2000).<br />
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However, Miles has not acted in a film at all since 2005's The Unknown (aka Clawed), a very low budget slasher-flick which also throws in the Bigfoot legend for good measure. Since then, Miles's only screen appearance has been in the 21-minute short film King of the Road (2010) in which he plays old school biker Wild Bill, who tries to win back his favourite bar, the last vestige of his faded glory.<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Christopher Lambert</span></u></b> (born Christophe Guy Denis Lambert)<br />
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1984</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> March 29th, 1957</div>
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<b>Location:</b> New York, USA<br />
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Most people know that Christopher Lambert is an anglicised version of his very Gallic real name, Christophe Lamb-bare, but he was actually born in the USA, not France or French Canada as many might suspect (he was raised in Switzerland, however). He'd been acting in various French language productions since 1980, but landing the role of Tarzan was his first major English language gig.<br />
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Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes was released in March 1984 when Lambert was 27, after being filmed in far-flung places such as Scotland and Cameroon. Made with a $30m budget, it earned $45.9m at the box office and was nominated for three Oscars. Perhaps it was the Scottish location filming that foretold the next project that Lambert became internationally famous for, playing Connor MacLeod in the 1986 film Highlander.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christopher Lambert today</td></tr>
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After this he took roles in a number of moderately successful action pictures, including The Sicilian (1987), Mortal Kombat (1995), Mean Guns (1997) and Beowulf (1999). He also appeared in three further Highlander films (1991-2000) and Fortress (1992) and its 2000 sequel. You'd be hard-pressed to find a film Lambert has appeared in this millennium that you've heard of - perhaps Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011) - but by and large he has remained in the medium to lower ranks of film stardom, one of those people you've heard of but find hard to name a picture he's been in recently. He did, however, play Marcel Janvier (aka The Chameleon) in six episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles in 2012 and 2013.<br />
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Now aged 59, Christopher is extremely myopic and has great difficulty seeing without his glasses - something that gets him into trouble when acting without spectacles!<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Hemant Birje</span></u></b><br />
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1985</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> August 19th, 1965</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Belgaum, Karnataka, India</div>
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Hemant played the Lord of the Apes in the Hindi-language Adventures of Tarzan, released in December 1985, and was quite the talking point at the time as it was not approved by the Burroughes estate, and also included some pretty racy scenes between Tarzan and Ruby (played by Kimi Katkar) and a 1980s disco soundtrack by Bappi Lahiri.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hemant Birje in his 40s</td></tr>
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It was the first film for the 20-year-old Hemant, who had been working as a security guard before being chosen to play Tarzan. The original choice was Mahesh Anand, but director Babbar Subhash wanted a new face for the role, and discovered Hemant in a wrestling ring during a visit to Pune. During film, Hemant was quite beaten up by the stunt director, but when he showed Subhash the scratches and bruises on his back, he was simply told that it would make the fact Tarzan is imprisoned in a circus all the more believable!<br />
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After Tarzan, Hemant's acting career took off, and he's been acting pretty solidly ever since in Bollywood films. His most recent role was aged 46 in 2011's Who's There?, but he has not appeared on screen since.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hemant in 2013, aged 48</td></tr>
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His absence from the screens may be explained by what has happened to him since 2011. In April 2012, Hemant's ex-wife Reshma, filed a complaint against him with Oshiwara police claiming he had beaten her. Hemant reportedly absconded when police visited his home to question him. Reshma claimed Hemant abused alcohol and drugs every day, and often beat her and their two daughters. Police did not act as it was deemed "domestic".<br />
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On October 30th, 2012, it seemed the roles were reversed when it was reported that Hemant was beaten up by two of his own friends in Andheri. The altercation was put down to alcohol. Hemant claimed he was attacked and hit on the head with bamboo sticks because he said he could not attend the wedding of his friend's niece. However, his "friends" Kishore Saproo and Phasi Rehman (who were arrested following the incident) said it was Hemant who punched them while demanding more alcohol! Hemant was hospitalised for treatment, and released soon after.<br />
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In April 2016, it was reported that Hemant had been thrown out of the Oshiwara house he had been illegally living in. His contract with the Castle Towers owner had expired, but he continued to live there despite being asked to leave. The owner filed a lawsuit against him and the police got involved to evict him.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b><u>Joe Lara</u></b> </span><span style="color: white;">(born William Joseph Lara)</span><br />
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1989 & 1996-1997</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> October 2nd, 1962</div>
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<b>Location:</b> San Diego, California, USA<br />
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After debuting as a soldier in 1988's Night Wars, Joe got his big break as Tarzan in a CBS TV movie broadcast on April 15th, 1989, when he was 26. The movie sees Tarzan leave Africa and make for New York City to seek vengeance for the murder of his ape mother, and to rescue Cheeta, who was taken by hunters. The project co-starred Jan-Michael Vincent, Tony Curtis and Kim Crosby.<br />
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This one-off movie is unrelated to the subsequent TV series in which Joe played Tarzan, however. Tarzan: The Epic Adventures ran for one 22-episode season between August 1996 and May 1997, and took on the more fantastical theme which had worked well for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It saw Tarzan back in Africa fighting magical sorcerers and creatures alongside his old friend Timba, played by Aaron Seville.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joe in more recent times</td></tr>
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A second season was planned for 1997-98, but Joe would have been replaced by Xavier DeClie in the title role. However, the production company went bankrupt and the second run never happened.<br />
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Beyond Tarzan, 6ft 3in Joe has made appearances in TV shows including Sweating Bullets (1993), Baywatch (1993), Conan (1998) and The Magnificent Seven (2000), and films such as Sunset Heat (1992), American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993), Warhead (1996), Doomsdayer (2000) and most recently the straight-to-video Starfire Mutiny (2002).<br />
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After that, Joe quit acting to move into the world of music, and is now a country music singer, having had some success with the track The Cry of Freedom. You can see and hear it below:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kFK1Pw46HV8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kFK1Pw46HV8?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<br />
To read the previous chapter about the silent era Tarzans, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">click here</a>, and the previous chapter about the Tarzans 1932-48, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-2-1932-1948.html" target="_blank">click here</a>. The previous chapter about Tarzans 1949-60 <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">is here</a>, and 1962-72 <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/tarzan-part-4-1962-1972.html" target="_blank">is here</a>. The next and final chapter will be about more modern versions of Tarzan through to the present day, and will appear on this blog shortly.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-69716478716099758592016-08-09T14:47:00.001+01:002016-08-24T10:10:52.331+01:00Myrna Loy (1905-1993)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6hcWq_pk7fi2PhGu52HyjlBha0O-l5VyDmFSshTYC1c2eijy-Tp4kAPZZxIzsY4amoWJPM5Vyp0adhH8e-5MN8tfKYeM2wvkejjt46FgqyJ3x9d4L7fWDa5-rVMhiNFSBdYYBez6TJU/s1600/myrna-loy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6hcWq_pk7fi2PhGu52HyjlBha0O-l5VyDmFSshTYC1c2eijy-Tp4kAPZZxIzsY4amoWJPM5Vyp0adhH8e-5MN8tfKYeM2wvkejjt46FgqyJ3x9d4L7fWDa5-rVMhiNFSBdYYBez6TJU/s200/myrna-loy.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> Myrna Adele Williams<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> August 2nd, 1905<br />
<b>Location:</b> Helena, Montana, USA<br />
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<b>Died:</b> December 14th, 1993<br />
<b>Location:</b> New York, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Complications following surgery<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> Actress who rose to prominence in the silent era, and consolidated her fame in the 1930s and 40s in films such as The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) and Meet Me in St Louis (1959). She was also known for her role as Nora Charles in the Thin Man film franchise (1934-47). She was never nominated for an Oscar, but did receive an Honorary Award in 1991, at the age of 85, for "her extraordinary qualities both on screen and off, with an appreciation for a lifetime's worth of indelible performances".<br />
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Myrna's career was going great guns throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, with particular success in romantic comedies, but the outbreak of World War Two saw her shift her focus away from making movies and onto the war effort, specifically the Red Cross. Myrna was vociferously outspoken against German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, and as a result was placed on his infamous blacklist (a list of Western names who would be sent to concentration camps if ever they were captured). Myrna helped to run a Naval Auxiliary canteen and toured widely to raise funds for the war coffers.<br />
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Myrna as Adele in Family</div>
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Affair, aged 61</div>
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Once the war was over, Myrna returned to making films, the first being The Thin Man Goes Home (1945), followed by another decade of strong silver screen efforts, including playing Dr Lillian Gilbreth in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and its sequel Belles on Their Toes (1952). By the mid to late 1950s, the frequency of her films began to lessen, although she did dabble in the new medium of television with several appearances on the General Electric Theater anthology series (1955-57) and The DuPont Show with June Allyson (1960).<br />
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However, the 1960s were much quieter as Myrna entered her sixth decade. Between 1960-67 she went seven years without appearing on film or TV, but was lured back to the screen at the age of 61 by a role in the sitcom Family Affair in February 1967, in which she played a waitress-for-hire with little waitressing experience! The success of this turn saw Myrna embrace more TV work, with appearances in various shows, such as The Virginian (1967), Columbo (1972), Ironside (1973) and a number of TV movies, including 1974's Indict and Convict, in which she played a judge.<br />
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A 73-year-old Myrna with Ralston Hill</div>
<div>
in Relatively Speaking at the Country</div>
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Dinner Playhouse in Denver</div>
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Myrna also returned to the stage in the 1973 revival of Clare Boothe Luce's The Women. It opened at the 46th Street Theatre on Broadway in April 1973, and ran for more than 60 performances over the following two months. Myrna played Mrs Morehead in what was her Broadway debut at the age of 67! Myrna also toured in a 1977/78 production of Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking.<br />
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In 1974, at the age of 69, she joined the ensemble cast of the disaster movie Airport 1975, playing alcoholic Mrs Devaney (she drank cocktails of Jim Beam and Olympia beer!), alongside the likes of Charlton Heston, Linda Blair, Dana Andrews, Roy Thinnes and Sid Caesar. This return to the spotlight in the 1970s soon waned again, however, as old age and illness crept in. There were appearances in the 1978 Burt Reynolds slapstick film The End (as Reynolds's mother), and Sidney Lumet's 1980 comedy Just Tell Me What You Want, in which she plays star Alan King's secretary Stella, but her retirement from acting was just around the corner.<br />
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One reason for the slowing down of activity in the 1970s was the fact Myrna had two mastectomies, in 1975 (aged 70) and 1979 (aged 74) for breast cancer.<br />
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Myrna's final acting role</div>
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in the sitcom Love, Sidney,</div>
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in 1982, aged 76</div>
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Her acting swansong was an episode of the TV sitcom Love, Sidney, which was about a middle-aged gay artist who shares his New York apartment with a single mum and her daughter. It starred Tony Randall as Sidney Shore, and Swoosie Kurtz as his friend Laurie. Myrna's episode was called Sidney and the Actress, broadcast on June 16th, 1982, when she was aged 76, and in it she played Sidney's idol Vera Lonnigan, whose fan club Sidney joins.<br />
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After that, Myrna wrote and released her autobiography, Being and Becoming, in 1987, but soon settled down into aged retirement. Myrna had never been nominated for an Academy Award, and to try and rectify this, a letter-writing campaign was launched, which included many of her former co-stars such as Roddy McDowall and Sidney Sheldon, spearheaded by Writers Guild of America board member Michael Russnow. The result was her Honorary Award at the 63rd Annual Oscars ceremony in March 1991. The 85-year-old Myrna did not attend the ceremony in person, but did send a video message from her home at 425 East 63rd Street in New York City, saying: "You've made me very happy, thank you very much." It was Myrna's last ever public appearance.<br />
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Myrna, aged 85, accepting her Honorary</div>
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Oscar in March, 1991</div>
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Myrna, aged 88, in 1993 with</div>
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Lauren Bacall</div>
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In December 1993, Myrna died, aged 88, in a Manhattan hospital from complications following unspecified surgery. She had been frail and in poor health for some time. Her body was cremated in New York and her ashes interred at Forestvale Cemetery in her hometown of Helena, Montana. That same year the <a href="http://myrnaloycenter.com/" target="_blank">Myrna Loy Center for the Performing and Media Arts</a> opened in Helena, and is still going strong today.<br />
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Myrna was a remarkable humanitarian as well as a film star. Her career break to help the war effort in the 1940s led to her getting involved with UNESCO, becoming a member of its US National Commission in 1948, the first Hollywood celebrity to do so. She also served as co-chair of the Advisory Council of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing.<br />
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Fountain of Education, with </div>
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Inspiration standing central,</div>
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modelled by Myrna in 1921</div>
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<b>Fascinating fact - Did you know that Myrna Loy was in Grease?</b> In 1921, at the age of just 16, Myrna, who was a drama student at Los Angeles's Venice High School, posed for sculpture teacher Harry Fielding Winebrenner as the central figure of Inspiration in his sculpture group Fountain of Education.<br />
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The sculpture went on display in front of the campus outdoor pool in May 1923, where it remained until 2002, when it was removed from display due to decades of exposure to the elements, and vandalism.<br />
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It was replace in 2010 by a bronze duplicate paid for by an alumni fundraising campaign, but the original Winebrenner sculpture can be seen in the opening scenes of the 1978 musical film Grease, which used Venice High as the location for the fictional Rydell High School.<br />
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A scene from the opening of Grease (1978), with the Fountain</div>
<div>
of Education sculpture visible</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-68751854088422533192016-08-02T14:41:00.001+01:002016-08-02T15:09:05.100+01:00Charles Hawtrey (1914-1988)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> George Frederick Joffre Hartree<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> November 30th, 1914<br />
<b>Location:</b> Hounslow, UK<br />
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<b>Died:</b> October 27th, 1988<br />
<b>Location:</b> Deal, UK<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart disease<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> One of the regular ensemble cast that made up the Carry On team in the UK in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, although Charles had been a star in his own right since the 1930s, starting as a child performer. Charles was known for his horn-rimmed spectacles and his catchphrase "Oh hello", as well as his effeminate manner.<br />
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Charles's career as a Carry On regular was long and memorable. His first appearance was as Peter Golightly in the very first film, Carry On Sergeant, in 1958, and he subsequently made appearances in a further 22 movies, as well as the 1969 and 1970 Christmas TV specials. However, his unrepentant alcoholism was what called time on his Carry On career in the end, and what ultimately sounded the death knell for his performing career overall.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles, 58, in his final film role, as<br />
Eustace Tuttle in Carry On Abroad</td></tr>
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By the 1960s Charles was drinking heavily, and his behaviour was becoming more and more erratic. Co-star Barbara Windsor recalled a scene in Carry On Spying (1964) where Charles passed out on a conveyer belt through drunkenness. It even got to the point where his love of drink was worked into the Carry On scripts, so much so that by 1972's Carry On Abroad, he was seen sunbathing on the beach and swigging from a bottle of sun tan lotion like it was booze! This was his very last Carry On assignment, although the films continued until the end of the decade (he was to have played Cecil Gaybody in the next film, 1973's Carry On Girls, but the role went to Jimmy Logan instead).<br />
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Charles's latter career outside the world of the Carry Ons is a sorry affair, but all the more fascinating for it. In 1971, when he was 57, he appeared in the children's adventure series Grasshopper Island, filmed in such far-flung locations as Corsica and Wales, playing Elderly Boy, but footage from this series is rare to find (clips exist on YouTube and Daily Motion, but not with Charles in), despite it being issued on DVD.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1YKOLEff-4F-VT4yHFKaJsyp4xlH5HdmzDmGv6uRfXoKKbLlMehn4JmrZER78RyMugWh2AC_j6yAVOH7FzN_OgYHacMEmWPHhv7heXEG4JgLtuIVPFmK0Px5i9AJ-5Q-BJoNB2KILWg/s1600/chplank.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1YKOLEff-4F-VT4yHFKaJsyp4xlH5HdmzDmGv6uRfXoKKbLlMehn4JmrZER78RyMugWh2AC_j6yAVOH7FzN_OgYHacMEmWPHhv7heXEG4JgLtuIVPFmK0Px5i9AJ-5Q-BJoNB2KILWg/s200/chplank.JPG" width="137" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles, 65, in 1979's The <br />
Plank, with Joanna Lumley</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Charles also turned to the stage to prop up his income, trading on his Carry On persona in seaside summer shows and pantomimes, including the Carry On Holiday Showtime and Snow White in Rhyl, North Wales, throughout the 1970s, Stop It Nurse in Torquay in 1972, and Snow White again in Nottingham in 1974. He appeared in pantos up until Christmas 1979.<br />
<br />
Charles's penultimate screen acting role was in Eric Sykes's celebrated silent comedy short The Plank, released in December 1979, when Charles was 65. This was actually a televised remake of the 1967 original, which Charles did not appear in. His co-stars here included Arthur Lowe, Bernard Cribbins, Charlie Drake, Frankie Howerd and Jimmy Edwards. Sadly, Charles's participation in this film was minimal and somewhat wasted, as he plays one of two lorry drivers (the other being Harry H Corbett) who are travelling with Joanna Lumley, who gets knocked unconscious by a blow to the back of her head from a plank of wood. Lumley collapses, dazed, into the arms of a clearly overjoyed Corbett, and Charles is reduced to giving a pursed look of resignation.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIu4VA6X9stxrOKjAeLOUv0-eZsub19lmG4-9pv79qmK-LV-ZWtbTa5pKwHJ3ikg4IKBsXW_M2X-lnoy1b8RwAtpOO68tGCecd56DizX6JY4auh2QoGomZrVTSlQtRchEESyETH8Xl8QQ/s1600/supergran.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIu4VA6X9stxrOKjAeLOUv0-eZsub19lmG4-9pv79qmK-LV-ZWtbTa5pKwHJ3ikg4IKBsXW_M2X-lnoy1b8RwAtpOO68tGCecd56DizX6JY4auh2QoGomZrVTSlQtRchEESyETH8Xl8QQ/s200/supergran.JPG" width="151" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles as the Duke of Claridge<br />
in Super Gran, aged 72</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Finally, Charles made a guest appearance in an episode of the children's series Super Gran, broadcast on April 12th, 1987, when he was 72. Super Gran and the State Visit concerned the visit to Chisleton of the Duke and Duchess of Claridge, the former played by Charles. Sadly, Charles really did look his age in this, and was no doubt performing through a fog of alcohol as ever!<br />
<br />
In the 1980s, Charles's shambolic appearance could not harm his radio work, and he regularly appeared as Fingers in a trilogy of radio plays by Wally K Daly about a criminal gang, entitled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLRv--wDKMg" target="_blank">Burglar's Bargains</a> (1979), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia21KiGMSZc" target="_blank">A Right Royal Rip-Off</a> (1982) and The Bigger They Are (1985), co-starring Carry On contemporary Bernard Bresslaw as well as Peter Jones and Lockwood West.<br />
<br />
However, Charles did have a number of non-acting appearances in his later years, including being guest on three editions of the celebrity biographical series This Is Your Life - for Hylda Baker in 1972, Dinah Sheridan in 1979 and Bill Owen in 1981.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcD8KLrrvt8QFrljheoxOQqeFsIbhf0SKSVLr-1xGkShZ-YpIcEKST65Hm85do8h1vmrCVzRfAWKtI_P1hcjDesGFYNeHa9FDHTNNDVUJOVQFKfhcT1FHNIcHd7oo7nef3HmlBY2uisgM/s1600/runtiyl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcD8KLrrvt8QFrljheoxOQqeFsIbhf0SKSVLr-1xGkShZ-YpIcEKST65Hm85do8h1vmrCVzRfAWKtI_P1hcjDesGFYNeHa9FDHTNNDVUJOVQFKfhcT1FHNIcHd7oo7nef3HmlBY2uisgM/s320/runtiyl.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From left, Charles on Bill Owen's This is Your Life (aged 66),<br />
as Dracula on Runaround (aged 62), and on the infamous Movie<br />
Memories (aged 66)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 1976 he appeared as Dracula on the Hallowee'n special of children's game show Runaround (see video at bottom of this entry), and in January 1981, there was perhaps his most notorious personal appearance of all, being interviewed by Roy Hudd on the chat show Movie Memories. Charles appears dishevelled and confused, clearly inebriated and barely able to string a comprehensible anecdote together.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ3RfaPs6IHN9AzZ-pDVOViJXKUlKNL_aimvedrV4ZPkOA_IPplD_JTNrhOAVfRryun7pdc38lnmR76BINjmt9r_N7j-NQQYiQMY2gIuF9H0n05-T_Q7xco4X_hKWw9rlYgfe2PkSrxOo/s1600/117.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ3RfaPs6IHN9AzZ-pDVOViJXKUlKNL_aimvedrV4ZPkOA_IPplD_JTNrhOAVfRryun7pdc38lnmR76BINjmt9r_N7j-NQQYiQMY2gIuF9H0n05-T_Q7xco4X_hKWw9rlYgfe2PkSrxOo/s200/117.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">117 Middle Street in Deal.<br />
You can see the blue plaque on<br />
the wall, erected in 1998 in<br />
Charles's memory</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Charles had been living at 117 Middle Street, an old smuggler's cottage in the seaside town of Deal in Kent, since 1968, and had become known as something of an eccentric, often getting drunk in the the local pubs and flirting with students from the nearby Royal Marines School of Music. In his diary entry for December 14th, 1987, Carry On comedian Kenneth Williams records that he met a man who said he once lived next door to Charles in Deal. The man said: "He's always pissed. Several of the pubs barred him. He can get very nasty, you know."<br />
<br />
Most revealingly, however, is Williams's diary entry for May 10th, 1970, when he paid Charles a visit at his home in Deal: "Charles came to the door in his undervest, unshaven. On entering, we saw his lunch steaming on the table, so we went off for more drinks till he was ready. He was still unshaven but showed us all over the house, which is rambling and incredibly tat - like a lodging house which all the boarders have suddenly deserted, and that revolting smell of rising damp and cat's fish everywhere. She [sic] produced male physique magazines with a great flourish and meaningful remarks, but they were all quite innocuous. I was horrified to learn then that Charles was travelling back [to London] with us! A nightmare journey of three hours and she had to lose her cigarette holder and search the car at Victoria (where we dumped her) to find the wretched thing. She pressed us all to come again and 'please regard it as your second home'. Before I do that, I'll need the rest home."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles being rescued from<br />
a house fire in August 1984,<br />
when he was aged 69</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 2010, Wes Butters wrote a biography of Charles which painted an awkward picture of the actor's final years in Deal. He said at the time: "It's 22 years since he died and the landlord of the local pub will not have a photo of him behind the bar because the customers will not stand for it. They hate him, and it's understandable. When he arrived, the locals would ask him for his autograph but he didn't like that and would tell them to fuck off and rip up their pieces of paper. That upset children and angered their parents. He would also refer to people down the pub as peasants.<br />
<br />
"By the end he was a bitter drunk who had exhausted his friends with his shenanigans and become reclusive and tormented. It's a tragic story."<br />
<br />
Charles hit the headlines on Sunday, August 5th, 1984, when a fire broke out at the 69-year-old's Deal home. Reportedly, Charles had gone to bed with a young rent boy and left a cigarette burning on his sofa, although some reports claim the male prostitute deliberately set fire to the house when Charles refused to pay him. Photos from the time show a fireman leading an emotionally distressed, partially-clothed and wig-less Charles away from his house. Apparently, he'd insisted on being rescued by the biggest firefighter!<br />
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On the subject of the fire, Kenneth Williams wrote to Jeffrey Kemp in July 1987, saying: "Yes, Charles Hawtrey is alive. He even survived a FIRE at his home in Deal. When the fireman brought him down the ladder, wrapped in a blanket from the upstairs window, they said: 'You're all right now' and he told them, 'No I'm not, my fags are upstairs by the bed, and my boyfriend's in it'. Later, in September 1987, he wrote: "You were not supposed to laugh about Charles Hawtrey being hauled out of the fire, with the boyfriend languishing in the bed and the fags uncollected. It is supposed to have a tragic ring, like the Wreck of the Deutschland or something. People are always writing asking me how they can get in touch with him. It is all otiose because he never answers letters. When he first retired to Deal I went down there with some friends to visit. Banged and banged on the door to no avail. Eventually a window on the opposite side screeched open and a woman with the hair in curlers shouted rudely, 'You after Charlie?'. 'Mister Hawtrey', I returned haughtily. 'We were seeking Mr Hawtrey'. 'Try the Saracen's Head' she bawled and shut the window. Well, we must have visited half the pubs in the neighbourhood, but eventually he was found, rather the worse for wear. Charlie was in orange trousers, blue shirt and silk scarf at the neck. He was carrying his umbrella as a parasol. The house was awful. Everywhere you went there were these huge brass beds."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieaOMli3IMiqN5ipeftyZK5sdUWZwFks5WFfFsheoFrXuEHa-82MVUn1vDPwHQd5AUHEavQLOSiLcx3EGSTA2b4jWYCrcAXJno9EXlu0IRtBkEszJ9F9shhCfTX09XqJqI9tSmH2KSeG0/s1600/fire.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieaOMli3IMiqN5ipeftyZK5sdUWZwFks5WFfFsheoFrXuEHa-82MVUn1vDPwHQd5AUHEavQLOSiLcx3EGSTA2b4jWYCrcAXJno9EXlu0IRtBkEszJ9F9shhCfTX09XqJqI9tSmH2KSeG0/s200/fire.JPG" width="145" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles being escorted out<br />
of 117 Middle Street at Deal<br />
following the fire</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On October 24th, 1988, Charles collapsed in the doorway of the Royal Hotel in Deal and shattered his femur. He was admitted to Buckland Hospital in Dover where he was diagnosed with peripheral vascular disease, caused principally by his lifetime of smoking. Charles was told that in order to save his life, his legs would have to be amputated, but he refused the operation, apparently claiming he preferred to die with his boots on!<br />
<br />
Charles died three days later, aged 73, in a nursing home in Walmer, near Deal. There is a story that a nurse asked him for his autograph while he was on his deathbed, and he threw a vase at her! Charles was cremated and his ashes scattered at Mortlake Crematorium, near Chiswick in London. There were just nine mourners at his funeral, none of them friends or family.<br />
<br />
<b>A bit of fun:</b> Clips of Charles's last screen appearances are few and far between (Movie Memories and Super Gran footage has been removed from YouTube), but we do have his appearance on 1976's Runaround to marvel at...<br />
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-35427715933057732112016-07-29T13:35:00.002+01:002021-10-18T09:55:33.297+01:00Lou Costello (1906-1959)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4etCwPB0N8gom20GwNP7Z3rzHjUr3bEptRC3Q7mSXRxrHC0Q1yCr3vB8o1h_GvlRoptx-a9n3LbNhLSFtSjD10yxil8hHe7oqLdqLdlimGQIyocKd-LzONWWMKJ85f1RGUsDR7ymR0Vo/s1600/louc.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4etCwPB0N8gom20GwNP7Z3rzHjUr3bEptRC3Q7mSXRxrHC0Q1yCr3vB8o1h_GvlRoptx-a9n3LbNhLSFtSjD10yxil8hHe7oqLdqLdlimGQIyocKd-LzONWWMKJ85f1RGUsDR7ymR0Vo/s200/louc.jpg" width="145" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> Louis Francis Cristillo<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> March 6th, 1906<br />
<b>Location:</b> Paterson, New Jersey, USA<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> March 3rd, 1959<br />
<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack<br />
<br />
<i>For Lou Costello's comedy partner Bud Abbott, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/bud-abbott-1897-1974.html" target="_blank">click here</a>.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> Comedy actor most famous for playing the gag man to Bud Abbott in the Abbott and Costello comedy partnership of the 1940s and 50s. He enjoyed joint success with Abbott in a string of branded comedies, such as Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1945), Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955).<br />
<br />
Abbott and Costello first worked together in 1935, and formally teamed up the following year to perform in burlesque, vaudeville, minstrel and stage shows. By 1938 they were gaining fans across America as part of the Kate Smith Radio Hour, and in 1940 they secured their first Hollywood film roles in One Night in the Tropics - they were actually minor characters but they stole the show with their comedy song and dance routines. After that, they never looked back...<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitBztHvsjYVQr2lfo6yrUCqS-qFC61XP8Hn4y2fD-_-oLEnkTDA2zJP_0hHpqCL43ZuMsoTYTpZRr6u85MDTc1lA8HfibxXEgarl4G8rG0AG4BKFuXfnJyFVvY49WvMQiZr13bTjsMPyE/s1600/budlou1945.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitBztHvsjYVQr2lfo6yrUCqS-qFC61XP8Hn4y2fD-_-oLEnkTDA2zJP_0hHpqCL43ZuMsoTYTpZRr6u85MDTc1lA8HfibxXEgarl4G8rG0AG4BKFuXfnJyFVvY49WvMQiZr13bTjsMPyE/s200/budlou1945.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Bud, 48, with Lou Costello in 1945's<br />
Abbott and Costello in Hollywood</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Well, they didn't for a few years. The Abbott and Costello films reigned supreme for 15 years between 1940-56, and saw the boys encounter everyone from Frankenstein's monster and the Mummy, to the Keystone Cops, Jekyll and Hyde and even Captain Kidd. They made 36 films together, and also had their own radio show (1940-49) and made 52 episodes of their own TV series (1952-54). You couldn't escape the boys and their winning brand of comedy. So what went wrong, and what became of them?<br />
<br />
It essentially came down to money. In their early days the boys split their earnings 60/40 in Abbott's favour, as the straight man was deemed the more valuable of the two. This was subsequently changed to 50/50, but after the success of 1941's film Buck Privates, Lou insisted upon a 60/40 split in his favour, which stuck for the rest of their career together. This drove an awkward wedge between them which was never truly resolved, and was made worse when Lou tried to insist that the duo were renamed Costello and Abbott (this never came to pass).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lou with Lou Jr,<br />
who drowned in<br />
a swimming<br />
pool just before<br />
his first birthday</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Just as Abbott's later life was plagued by ill-health (he was epileptic), so too was Lou's. In March 1943, at the age of 37, after completing the film Hit the Ice, he had an attack of rheumatic fever and was unable to work for six months. However, his return to the limelight was overshadowed by tragedy. In November 1943, on his way to the studio to record a new episode of the duo's radio series, Lou was informed that his 12-month-old baby son Lou Jr had drowned in the family swimming pool after getting loose from his pram out of sight of the nanny. Lou Jr was just two days short of his first birthday. Lou went on with the recording of the show and did not mention the incident on air, until <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/bud-abbott-1897-1974.html" target="_blank">Bud Abbott</a> explained what had happened afterwards.<br />
<br />
After the death of his son, Lou's friend Maxene Andrews said his character changed: "He didn't seem as fun-loving and as warm. He seemed to anger easily. There was a difference in his attitude."<br />
<br />
In 1954 the duo had to pull out of recording the film Fireman Save My Child due to Lou's continuing heart issues due to rheumatic fever. They were replaced in the finished film by lookalikes Hugh O'Brian and Buddy Hackett, although Bud and Lou can be spotted in some long shots.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhup-MzNJO1xdaM4rBEicpsF3cbtxOerLNjHzvfrgocymC-Pm2xEPHJRcX2pUv2b0zXtlk4snZZz6_CvbSknVJeeNvA15nemkoZ9ArVkKkbZ4fmWow8vXmA5KF9fXo7DLqMziBrr33Oowg/s1600/lou1957.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhup-MzNJO1xdaM4rBEicpsF3cbtxOerLNjHzvfrgocymC-Pm2xEPHJRcX2pUv2b0zXtlk4snZZz6_CvbSknVJeeNvA15nemkoZ9ArVkKkbZ4fmWow8vXmA5KF9fXo7DLqMziBrr33Oowg/s200/lou1957.JPG" width="151" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lou on The Steve Allen Show<br />
in December, 1957, aged 51</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After so long reigning supreme, there had to come a fall in the boys' popularity. After completing Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy in 1955, Universal Pictures did not renew their contract, so the duo were hired by producer Bob Goldstein for a film released through United Artists, Dance With Me, Henry. This was to be the last film Bud and Lou would appear in together. It was released to lukewarm reviews in December 1956, and by July 1957 Abbott and Costello brought an end to their partnership after 20 years.<br />
<br />
Both Lou and Bud were harassed by tax collectors and were forced to sell most of their assets to settle up with the IRS in 1956, including their homes and their rights to the Universal films. Now he was a solo artiste, Lou went back on the road touring the comedy circuit as a one-man show, including stints in Las Vegas. He made several appearances in 1957 and 1958 on the Steve Allen Show, recreating old Abbott and Costello routines with either Louis Nye or Tom Poston as straight man. His final appearance on that show was January 19th, 1959, but he also made an appearance on The Lux Show on May 29th, 1958 with Rosemary Clooney, and The Ed Sullivan Show with the cast of the Suzie Wong Show on November 16th, 1958.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lou in Blaze of Glory<br />
in 1958, aged 52</td></tr>
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Determined to be known as more of an actor than a comedian, Lou secured a role in an edition of the General Electrical Theater anthology series. The episode was called Blaze of Glory and broadcast on September 21st, 1958. Lou plays plumber Neal Andrews who is called out to a late-night emergency which turns out to be a gang of jewel thieves on a job, who need an expert to retrieve a haul of diamonds they've clumsily spilled down the kitchen sink!<br />
<br />
The following month, on October 22nd, Lou made a guest appearance in the Western series Wagon Train, in an episode called The Tobias Jones Story. Lou plays alcoholic Tobias who gets himself accused of murder.<br />
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Lou's final acting work was recorded between December 3rd-22nd, 1958 for the movie The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock. In it he played inventor Artie Pinsetter, whose fiancee Emmy Lou (played by Dorothy Provine) is exposed to radiation and grows to become 30ft tall. The film's tagline was "Thirty Feet of Smouldering Passion - and She's Mine, All Mine!" Clips of this film can be seen in Neil Finn's parody music video for the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEcoIV6NI-U" target="_blank">She Will Have Her Way</a> (1998). The film was released on August 5th, 1959, a posthumous last hurrah for Lou's career.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lou in The 30 Foot Bride of<br />
Candy Rock, aged 52</td></tr>
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On February 25th, 1959, while watching television, Lou collapsed from a heart attack in his apartment at 4222 Ethel Avenue, Los Angeles, and was transferred to Beverly Hills Doctors' Hospital. Sadly, he was not to come back out, and on March 3rd - just three days before his 53rd birthday - Lou passed away.<br />
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According to a contemporary report in the LA Times, Lou's manager Eddie Sherman said: "He said he wanted to turn over on his side. He said 'I think I'll be more comfortable'. Before I could reach him he slumped back on his pillow and was gone." There are false claims that he died surrounded by family and friends and his last words were actually: "That was the best ice cream soda I ever tasted". The truth is that at 3pm Lou sent his wife Anne home to cook tea for their daughter Christine, but just 55 minutes later, Lou died, surrounded by private nurses.<br />
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Sherman added: "We were kidding around all during the morning. Lou had a date to do the Steve Allen TV show on April 12th and was telling me an idea he had thought up for a race track sketch. At about 10.30am he said he felt like eating a strawberry ice cream soda. I got him one and he really enjoyed it. He was a really happy man that morning. He also had another date with Steve for May 24th and then he was planning to do six weeks at Las Vegas Dunes. Lou was always working up new routines."<div>
<br />
Lou's body was taken to Steen's mortuary in North Hollywood where rosary was recited on March 6th at 8pm. A requiem mass was held on March 7th at St Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Sherman Oaks and he was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. Just nine months later, on December 5th, 1959, Lou's widow Anne died of a heart attack, aged just 47. Lou and Anne's daughter Carole also sadly died prematurely of a stroke in March 1987, aged 49.<br />
<br />
<b>A bit of fun:</b> Before Lou became a comedian, he was a successful amateur boxer going by the name Lou King in the 1920s. He won 32 straight fights before being knocked out, effectively ending his boxing career. Here he can be seen interviewing boxer Max Baer following his win over Tony Galento in July 1940, with muted support from Joe Louis!<br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-87653926698713364422016-07-28T14:37:00.002+01:002016-07-29T13:36:20.086+01:00Bud Abbott (1897-1974)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPLb9NLed53oEsbAIHtjmhxLuYQjH-y-fXgvgYhPE4KRgZgG3eSSUzJW3ocUUVh-AH8Ec4IN_ceDuUDswSZPsN8tgG1Op2kbH_aQDz3vKEVVSjUBPQoOHt5mbE3CRZfPASc4VqWrgR_Ms/s1600/Bud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPLb9NLed53oEsbAIHtjmhxLuYQjH-y-fXgvgYhPE4KRgZgG3eSSUzJW3ocUUVh-AH8Ec4IN_ceDuUDswSZPsN8tgG1Op2kbH_aQDz3vKEVVSjUBPQoOHt5mbE3CRZfPASc4VqWrgR_Ms/s200/Bud.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> William Alexander Abbott<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> October 2nd, 1897<br />
<b>Location:</b> Reading, Pennsylvania, USA<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> April 24th, 1974<br />
<b>Location:</b> Woodland Hills, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Prostate cancer<br />
<br />
<i>For Bud Abbott's comedy partner Lou Costello, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/lou-costello-1906-1959.html" target="_blank">click here</a>.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> Comedy actor most famous for playing the "straight man" to Lou Costello in the Abbott and Costello comedy partnership of the 1940s and 50s. He enjoyed joint success with Costello in a string of branded comedies, such as Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1945), Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955).<br />
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Abbott and Costello first worked together in 1935, and formally teamed up the following year to perform in burlesque, vaudeville, minstrel and stage shows. By 1938 they were gaining fans across America as part of the Kate Smith Radio Hour, and in 1940 they secured their first Hollywood film roles in One Night in the Tropics - they were actually minor characters but they stole the show with their comedy song and dance routines. After that, they never looked back...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bud, 48, with Lou Costello in 1945's<br />
Abbott and Costello in Hollywood</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Well, they didn't for a few years. The Abbott and Costello films reigned supreme for 15 years between 1940-56, and saw the boys encounter everyone from Frankenstein's monster and the Mummy, to the Keystone Cops, Jekyll and Hyde and even Captain Kidd. They made 36 films together, and also had their own radio show (1940-49) and made 52 episodes of their own TV series (1952-54). You couldn't escape the boys and their winning brand of comedy. So what went wrong, and what became of them?<br />
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It essentially came down to money. In their early days the boys split their earnings 60/40 in Bud's favour, as the straight man was deemed the more valuable of the two. This was subsequently changed to 50/50, but after the success of 1941's film Buck Privates, Costello insisted upon a 60/40 split in his favour, which stuck for the rest of their career together. This drove an awkward wedge between them which was never truly resolved, and was made worse when Costello tried to insist that the duo were renamed Costello and Abbott (this never came to pass).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlUpg2_E4Ier3vLHlSTpK7A45SIeTbGw3GdaHiPZnVFal-MlwOW2zTPGE2hyJ56CBwwKSbWlSOrepni0_RbxXeSMpKJuudhBFvnuTyFDipMkg8eXv3VTs_Pi3gbh3H1_sXlw_T6lkjVo/s1600/buddance.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlUpg2_E4Ier3vLHlSTpK7A45SIeTbGw3GdaHiPZnVFal-MlwOW2zTPGE2hyJ56CBwwKSbWlSOrepni0_RbxXeSMpKJuudhBFvnuTyFDipMkg8eXv3VTs_Pi3gbh3H1_sXlw_T6lkjVo/s200/buddance.JPG" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bud aged 59 in Dance With<br />
Me, Henry</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After so long reigning supreme (Bud earned a $393,314 salary in 1942), there had to come a fall in the boys' popularity. After completing Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy in 1955, Universal Pictures did not renew their contract, so the duo were hired by producer Bob Goldstein for a film released through United Artists, Dance With Me, Henry. This was to be the last film Bud and Lou would appear in together. It was released to lukewarm reviews in December 1956, and by July 1957 Abbott and Costello brought an end to their partnership after 20 years.<br />
<br />
The duo were harassed by tax collectors and were forced to sell most of their assets to settle up with the IRS. In 1959, the IRS demanded Bud pay more than $750,000 in taxes, forcing him to sell his home in Encino, California (at a loss) and his 200-acre ranch. His wife Betty sold her jewellery and furs and he relinquished all future profits from his Universal film contract. Bud was forced to beg for donations from Abbott and Costello fans, to small reward.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwIKuvuXzwUsqVnvQ1nBB4bDyztCgc-grgU5eLVFNPFvliwfm51gDhHAQPDOC8Ffy0EUm4UJsjr4clE6vnYP5Vas9J9Orq1972CoCsewYYNH6aKs2UTTE8vl7381XRz46FlDkCQ-Obobc/s1600/budgeneral.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwIKuvuXzwUsqVnvQ1nBB4bDyztCgc-grgU5eLVFNPFvliwfm51gDhHAQPDOC8Ffy0EUm4UJsjr4clE6vnYP5Vas9J9Orq1972CoCsewYYNH6aKs2UTTE8vl7381XRz46FlDkCQ-Obobc/s200/budgeneral.JPG" width="121" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aged 62 in The Joke's<br />
On Me</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Less than two years after the partnership was broken up, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/lou-costello-1906-1959.html" target="_blank">Lou Costello</a> died, in March 1959, aged 52. So what did Bud do in the post-Lou years?<br />
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Well, he didn't waste any time getting back on the horse, and in 1960 formed a new comedy partnership with musician and voice artist Candy Candido (he later went on to give voice to Gentle Ben in the TV series). The partnership was moderately well received while on tour across the US, but Bud was plagued with ill-health, suffering an epileptic seizure on his way to one of their gigs. Bud soon called it quits, claiming "no one could ever live up to Lou".<br />
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The following year, on April 16th, 1961, Bud turned his hand to acting in an episode of the General Electric Theater called The Joke's On Me. It starred Lee Marvin as an obnoxious comedian, and Bud played his manager.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bud, aged 65, interviewed for<br />
Here's Hollywood</td></tr>
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Another of Bud's screen appearances was for the series Here's Hollywood, in which celebrities were interviewed about their life and careers, often at their own homes. Bud's interview went out on December 7th, 1962, when he was 65 years old. After that, Bud did make an appearance on the daytime game show It Takes Two in 1969 reminiscing about his career with Costello, but pretty much disappeared after that due to ill-health. He did, however, lend his voice to his animated self in the Hanna-Barbera Abbott and Costello cartoon series in 1967.<br />
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Since he was aged 29, Bud had suffered from epilepsy, something he attempted to control by drinking rather too much alcohol at times. In 1964, aged 67, he suffered a series of strokes, and by 1970 was living off a $180-per-month social security benefit. Betty worked part-time and he was supported by his children, Victoria and Bud Jr. Bud suffered more strokes that same year.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bud with walking stick<br />
in the last days of being<br />
able to walk</td></tr>
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In 1972, a 75-year-old Bud fell and broke his hip. His daughter Victoria told the National Enquirer: "The doctors don't hold any hope for him. My father is a very sick man. He has prostate cancer. He is in a lot of pain and hallucinates a great deal. Doctors say he has three to six months to live, but only God can tell. His condition changes from day to day. Sometimes he seems okay and in the next moment he is incoherent and oblivious to those around him."<br />
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Following the article, the Abbotts were bombarded with letters and cards from well-wishers - sometimes including money - and in September 1972, Bud's wife Betty reported back: "We couldn't possibly answer all the letters, but I want to thank everybody. Please tell them that Bud is not alone. The doctors never tell me anything except that he's very sick. If he could only live. I say my prayers for my husband every night, but I want to keep him with me for as long as I can."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bed-ridden Bud at the age of 75,<br />
surrounded by the fan mail he received<br />
following the National Enquirer article</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Bud's final years were spent in a hospital bed in what was the Abbott family's former dining room. He was unable to move or talk and was undoubtedly in a lot of pain. On April 24th, 1974, Bud finally died of prostate cancer at the age of 76 at his home in Woodland Hills, California, surrounded by his wife Betty and his two children. His remains were cremated and his ashes spread in the Pacific Ocean. Soon after Bud's death, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/groucho-marx-1890-1977.html" target="_blank">Groucho Marx</a> heralded him as the "greatest straight man ever".<br />
<br />
<b>Trivia:</b> Bud was an avid gun collector and once owned one of Adolf Hitler's shotguns as well as some of TV cowboy Tom Mix's pearl-handled pistols.<br />
<br />
<b>A bit of fun:</b> Why not relive Abbott and Costello's classic Who's On First? comedy routine...<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-45660975885913984082016-07-27T16:11:00.001+01:002016-08-22T11:33:10.789+01:00Tarzan - Part 4 (1962-1972)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-rjkpVt0scrxJzUYa5NkDjaN7U2VMp1rzeXHMTCFmHF79yzrdg-XxYYVYTH12k6scvz26bF-n-UiLdww_qdYHPbifDZ6lGomiDdQtuNOXtUCh-E9jxSblItzlITzWHVKvXQpwVt4tmEE/s1600/ronely.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-rjkpVt0scrxJzUYa5NkDjaN7U2VMp1rzeXHMTCFmHF79yzrdg-XxYYVYTH12k6scvz26bF-n-UiLdww_qdYHPbifDZ6lGomiDdQtuNOXtUCh-E9jxSblItzlITzWHVKvXQpwVt4tmEE/s200/ronely.jpg" width="175" /></a></div>
<b>Character's first film appearance:</b> Tarzan of the Apes (released January 27th, 1918)<br />
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<b>Character description:</b> Tarzan - aka John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke - is a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his novel Tarzan of the Apes in 1912. He was a feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani great apes after being separated from his parents when their ship was marooned off the African coast by mutineers. As an adult he experiences modern civilisation for the first time, largely rejecting it and choosing to remain in the wild as a heroic adventurer.</div>
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This is the fourth in a multi-part entry charting what happened to the various actors who have played Tarzan over the years. <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">Click here for the silent era (1918-1929)</a>, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-2-1932-1948.html" target="_blank">click here for the 1930s and 1940s (1932-1948)</a>, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">click here for the 1950s</a>, or read on to find about the Tarzans from the 1960s...</div>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Jock Mahoney</span></u></b> (born Jacques Joseph O'Mahoney)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1962-63</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> February 7th, 1919</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Chicago, USA</div>
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<b>Died:</b> December 14th, 1989</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Bremerton, Washington, USA</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Stroke<br />
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As with so many actors who played Tarzan, Jock had an action-packed start in life, dropping out of university in Iowa to enlist with the US Marines at the outbreak of World War Two. He served as a pilot, flight instructor and even a war correspondent.<br />
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After the war he became a breeder of horses, but soon fell into the world of showbiz when he became a stuntman, doubling for screen stars such as Gregory Peck, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/errol-flynn-1909-1959.html" target="_blank">Errol Flynn</a> and John Wayne. If ever you've seen the 1948 film Adventures of Don Juan, with Flynn in the title role, there's a scene in the climactic battle where someone leaps from a high staircase. That's Jock, the only stuntman director Vincent Sherman could find to do it, and he earned $1,000 for the job.<br />
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Jock began performing stunts for movies in 1946, when he was 27, and actually remained an expert in stuntwork for decades to come. His final stunt credit was as the stunt coordinator for the 1981 film Tarzan, the Ape Man (starring Miles O'Keeffe as Lord Greystoke). At the same time that his stunting work took off, Jock also found himself cast in credited acting roles, the first being the Arizona Kid in the 1947 Three Stooges short Out West (actually credited as Jacques O'Mahoney, his real name).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jock as the Range Rider on TV</td></tr>
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This action-orientated film work continued through the 1950s, very often uncredited, and most often in the Western genre. It was in 1951 that Jock secured his first significant, long-running role, as the titular Range Rider in three seasons of the Western TV show. After 78 episodes, the show was axed, but the fame Jock had enjoyed on the small screen transferred to the big screen, and he was subsequently cast in larger roles in movies such as Showdown at Abilene (1956), Joe Dakota (1957) and Slim Carter (1957).<br />
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Between 1958-59 Jock enjoyed his second regular role as Yancy Derringer in 34 episodes of the adventure TV series.<br />
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Jock's first involvement with Tarzan actually came in 1948 when he auditioned for the role following the departure of <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/johnny-weissmuller.html" target="_blank">Johnny Weissmuller</a>. <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">Lex Barker</a> got the part, but 12 years later Jock finally got to appear in a Tarzan film - albeit as the bad guy, Coy Banton, in Tarzan the Magnificent, starring <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">Gordon Scott</a>. Jock's 6ft 4in 220lb frame impressed producer Sy Weintraub, and the 43-year-old Jock was duly handed the loin cloth for July 1962's Tarzan Goes to India, which was actually filmed in India. The film unfortunately recorded a loss of $178,000, but this did not stop the follow-up from filming in just as far-flung a location, this time in Bangkok, Thailand, for Tarzan's Three Challenges (released June 1963). It made $1m at the North American box office.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jock as Coy Banton in the 1960 film<br />
Tarzan the Magnificent, with Gordon<br />
Scott as the title character</td></tr>
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Mid-way through shooting this second film, Jock - who still stands today as the oldest actor to play the role - contracted dysentery, dengue fever and pneumonia and his weight fell from 220lbs to 175lbs. Ironically, a stuntman, Englishman Ray Austin, had to perform the 120ft dive from Begor Bridge in Jock's place. It took Jock 18 months to recover from the effects of filming in the Thai jungle, and because the producers wanted a younger Tarzan, Jock's contract was dissolved.<br />
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But Jock's involvement with Tarzan in the 1960s was not over. He may have relinquished the role himself, but he did go on to appear in the NBC TV series, playing three different roles in four episodes between 1966-67. Jock's acting career continued apace, with roles in <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Batman%20%28TV%20series%29" target="_blank">Batman</a> (1966 and 1968), Hawaii Five-O (1971) and Banacek (1972), but during filming for an episode of King Fu called The Hoots in 1973, the 54-year-old Jock suffered a stroke, but made a full recovery (he plays a rancher who objects to sheep owned by the Amish-like Hutterites drinking the same water as his cattle).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jock aged 65 in The Fall Guy</td></tr>
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Later work included BJ and the Bear (including the recurring character of Jason T Willard in 1981), several parts in The Fall Guy (1982-84, including the episode King of the Cowboys alongside <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/roy-rogers-1911-1998.html" target="_blank">Roy Rogers</a> and other former TV cowboys) and the ninja series The Master (1984). Jock's appearance in this latter series marked his final screen role, on August 31st, 1984, in the episode A Place to Call Home.<br />
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He was also an interviewee for the TV documentary Stooge Snapshots, which looked back at the life and career of the Three Stooges through the eyes and words of those who'd worked with them.<br />
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Jock made personal appearances at many conventions and signings in his latter years, but on December 12th, 1989, he was involved in a car accident in Bremerton, Washington, and finally died of a second stroke two days later, aged 70, at Harrison Memorial Hospital. Jock's ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. On February 6th, 1990, a memorial tribute to Jock was held at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City, California, attended by more than 350 people.<br />
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<b><u>Trivia:</u></b> Jock Mahoney married three times, but his second wife Margaret Field had herself been married before, and had two children by her earlier marriage - one of whom was Hollywood actor Sally Field, making Jock her stepfather.<br />
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Here you can watch an entire episode of Jock playing the Range Rider in the episode Old Timer's Trail, broadcast in 1953 and co-starring Dickie Jones, Elaine Riley and Sheb Wooley.<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Mike Henry</span></u></b> (born Michael Dennis Henry)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1966-1968</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> August 15th, 1936</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA</div>
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Mike came from sporting stock, like so many Tarzans before him. He played as a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers American Football team between 1958-61 and the Los Angeles Rams between 1963-64. In his NFL career he played 76 games, and racked up nine interceptions and six fumble recoveries. It was while playing for the LA team that he was noticed by executives at Warner Brothers.<br />
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Mike had actually been acting on and off for a few years before Tarzan came calling, having appeared in 77 Sunset Strip in 1963 and the film Spencer's Mountain (as Spencer's uncredited brother). He was cast aged 29 as the Apeman in three films which were all shot back to back in 1965.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mike playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers</td></tr>
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Tarzan and the Valley of Gold was released in July 1966 and is notable for depicting Tarzan in a James Bond-style tropical suited, globetrotting manner. It was filmed in Acapulco, New Mexico and at the Teotihuacan ruins. Tarzan and the Great River was released in September 1967, having been filmed in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. During filming, Dinky the chimp (playing Cheeta, naturally) bit Mike on the chin, requiring 20 stitches. Sadly, Dinky was put to sleep and Mike later sued Tarzan's producers for the accident as well as other unsafe working conditions (he also suffered an ear infection, a liver ailment and dysentery). There was an out-of-court settlement (there were two lawsuits, one for $800,000 and another for $75,000). The third film was Tarzan and the Jungle Boy, released in May 1968, having been filmed in Brazil and along the Amazon River.<br />
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Following this mammoth production period shooting all three films, Mike was offered the role of Tarzan in a forthcoming NBC TV series, but the actor was disappointed by the working conditions, as well as the chimpanzee bite and exhaustion, and opted out (despite being contracted).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mike as Junior in Smokey and<br />
the Bandit II, aged 44</td></tr>
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Mike's acting career continued (he was briefly considered for the part of <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Batman%20%28TV%20series%29" target="_blank">Batman</a> in the TV series before it went to <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/batman-tv-series-1966-68-good-guys.html" target="_blank">Adam West</a>), with roles in 1968's The Green Berets, TV series like Daniel Boone (1970) and M*A*S*H (1977), and films Rio Lobo (1970), Skyjacked (1972), Soylent Green (1973) and Adios Amigo (1976). In 1977 he secured the role of Junior Justice in the Burt Reynolds smash hit Smokey and the Bandit, and reprised the part in two sequels in 1980 and 1983. His final acting work was as a Russian in the Golden Globe-nominated comedy Outrageous Fortune (1987), starring Shelley Winters and Bette Midler.<br />
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Mike also worked as a successful producer of television commercials for Video Productions Inc.<br />
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In March 2016, Mile End Films celebrated 40 years of the Smokey and the Bandit films with an 84-minute documentary The Bandit, which reunited old cast and crew, including Mike, Burt and stuntman Hal Needham. The film won director Jesse Moss an honourable mention for Best Documentary Feature at the 2016 Nashville Film Festival.<br />
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Mike was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1988, at the age of only 52, and at the time of writing - July 2016 - he is still going strong at the age of 79.<br />
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<b>A bit of fun:</b> On March 29th, 1965 Mike appeared on the American panel show I've Got a Secret to announce that he was to be the new Tarzan. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBaYsHQi2BQ" target="_blank">Here it is.</a><br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Ron Ely</span></u></b> (born Ronald Pierce Ely)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1966-1968</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> June 21st, 1938</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Hereford, Texas, USA</div>
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Ron Ely - at 6ft 4in tall - had been an imposing presence in films since playing a navigator in 1958 musical South Pacific, after which he also had work in The Fiend Who Walked the West (1958), The Remarkable Mr Pennypacker (1959) and The Night of the Grizzly (1966), as well as a number of TV shows such as Father Knows Best (1959), The Millionaire (1959) and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1960).<br />
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It was in 1961 that Ron made a breakthrough playing the part of Mike Madison in 18 episodes of the TV series The Aquanauts, about professional salvage divers making a living by recovering treasures from sunken wrecks off the coast of California. Ron's character was a replacement for that of Keith Larsen's Drake Andrews.<br />
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The Tarzan TV series depicted the King of the Jungle as a well-educated man who had tired of civilisation and decided to return to the jungle, where he was raised. Ron appeared as Tarzan in two seasons and 57 episodes, beginning on September 8th, 1966 and finishing April 5th, 1968, between the ages of 28 and 30.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ron as Doc Savage, aged 37</td></tr>
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When the TV series ended, Ron's acting career continued, taking in Ironside (1971), Marcus Welby MD (1974) and Wonder Woman (1978), as well as securing the title role in film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze in 1975. Not everything was rosy, however, as at one stage in the 1970s he was driving a school bus in Westport, Connecticut.<br />
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The 1980s and beyond saw appearances in the usual suspects, including The Love Boat (1980/82/83), Hotel (1983), Fantasy Island (1979/80/82/84) and Superboy (1991). He even appeared in the French-Canadian-Mexican TV series Tarzan in 1992 as game hunter Gordon Shaw.<br />
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Between 1979-81 he also hosted his own game show, Face the Music, and in 1980 and 1981 was the host of the Miss America pageants.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ron in his late 70s</td></tr>
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Over the last 25 years Ron's appearances have become few and far between, with roles in The Hat Squad (1992), LA Law (1993), Hawkeye (1994) and Sheena (2001). His most recent screen appearance has been as Elder Miller in the July 2014 Lifetime TV movie Expecting Amish, when Ron was 76. However, he is due to appear as Ares in the £25m fantasy film Mesopotamia, due for release in 2018.<br />
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In the 1990s Ron branched out to become an author, releasing the books Night Shadows in 1994 and East Beach in 1995, both mysteries featuring the private eye Jake Sands. In 2015 Ron announced he was selling his 1.5-acre Santa Barbara home in California for $5.195m. He'd lived there for almost 30 years.</div>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Steve Hawkes</span></u></b> (born Stjepan Sipek)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1969/1972</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> 1942</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Croatia</div>
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Born in what is today known as Croatia (back then it was Yugoslavia), Stjepan Sipek - aka Steve Sipek - emigrated to Canada in 1959 as an ambitious 17-year-old, inspired to pursue a career in the movies by his idol, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/johnny-weissmuller.html" target="_blank">Johnny Weissmuller</a>. He took up long distance swimming and wrestling to cultivate his 228lb physique, and his first success in acting was playing landscaper Carl Parker in the 1968 lesbian erotic B-flick Odd Triangle (credited as Steve Pipick), but it was the following year when the 27-year-old Steve landed the role of Tarzan... sort of!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 30-year-old Steve as seen in 1972's <br />
Tarzan and the Brown prince</td></tr>
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Tarzan in the Golden Grotto was a Spanish-made film completely unauthorised by the estate of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. Filmed in Suriname, Florida, Africa, Spain and Italy, the producers initially ran out of money and had to start from scratch and make it afresh. The fee from the Burroughs estate to license Tarzan was too steep for Pan Latina Films, so to avoid copyright infringement they simply renamed the lead character Zan, but he was Tarzan in all but name (including subtitled versions!). It was released in June 1969, and a follow-up was soon put into production, entitled Tarzan and the Brown Prince, released in June 1972. This was filmed in Rainbow Springs, Florida, and this time the producers were apparently able to license the Tarzan name.<br />
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Leaving Tarzan behind him, Steve appeared in a handful of other low budget productions, including the 1972 horror/ sci-fi movie Blood Freak, in which "only the blood of drug addicts could satisfy its thirst" and sees Steve transform into a monster turkey; 1973's The Sexiest Story Ever Told (you can imagine this one!); and October 1975's children's adventure Stevie, Samson and Delilah, which co-starred Steve's son, Steve Hawkes Jr. Steve also wrote and directed these ventures.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scenes from the schlock horror movie Blood Freak, in which<br />
Steve (left, aged 30) turns into a murderous turkey monster</td></tr>
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Steve left the world of acting after this and set up his own animal sanctuary in Loxahatchee, Florida, but Steve's exploits in this sphere have proven noteworthy for the wrong reasons. On July 13th, 2004, Steve's 600lb pet Bengal tiger Bobo escaped from the sanctuary and was shot and killed the next day by a wildlife officer. Steve claimed the officer had committed needless murder of Bobo.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve pictured with one of<br />
his big cats in 1985, aged 43</td></tr>
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However, just five days later, on July 19th, Steve's house caught fire after a newly-installed air conditioning system malfunctioned and sparked a blaze. Fire crews found it difficult to get to the property to tackle the fire as Steve had electric fencing around the property to keep in the exotic animals he kept there. The fire was eventually put out, and no people or animals were hurt.<br />
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On February 27th, 2012, Steve was arrested at his West Palm Beach home and two tigers and a leopard (some reports say panther) were removed from his compound due to a lack of federal permit to own such animals. Police claim this was actually his third arrest for such crimes.<br />
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Steve returned to the world of acting in 2012 for the $50,000 Z-movie 2056: Escape from Zombie Island, and its $10,000 2013 sequel, 2057: Return to Zombie Island. He played Tar in both films, and both films are atrocious.<br />
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<b><u>Watch:</u></b> You can see a 70-year-old Steve speak emotionally about having to relinquish his beloved big cats in this interview with the Palm Beach Post from February 27th, 2012:<br />
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To read the previous chapter about the silent era Tarzans, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">click here</a>, and the previous chapter about the Tarzans 1932-48, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-2-1932-1948.html" target="_blank">click here</a>. The previous chapter about Tarzans 1949-60 <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">is here</a>. The next chapter, about the 1980s Tarzans, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/tarzan-part-5-1980s.html" target="_blank">is here</a>.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-36075336751574167772016-07-07T13:58:00.002+01:002016-07-28T13:12:02.350+01:00Etta James (1938-2012)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> Jamesetta Hawkins<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Tuesday, January 25th, 1938<br />
<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA<br />
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<b>Died:</b> Friday, January 20th, 2012<br />
<b>Location:</b> Riverside, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Leukaemia and dementia<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> Legendary American singer who straddled the genres, including jazz, blues, R&B, soul and gospel, and is believed to have bridged the gap between blues and rock 'n' roll. She was nominated for a Grammy Award 15 times, winning three - for Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holliday (1995), Let's Roll (2004) and Blues to the Bone (2005) - and received three further Grammy honours - the Lifetime Achievement in 2003 and two Hall of Fame awards for At Last (1999) and The Wallflower (2008). She also enjoyed a couple of number one blues and jazz records in the States, including 2001's Blue Gardenia and 2003's Let's Roll, while in 1955 she had a US R&B chart-topper with The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry).<br />
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Etta's 1960s heyday soon gave way to a slump in commercial, but not critical, popularity in the 1970s. She was devastated when the founder of the label which had helped make her a star - Leonard Chess of Chess Records - died in 1969, and although she continued recording for Chess, it wasn't working, and she left the label in 1979.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Etta circa 1970</td></tr>
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It was in the 1970s that Etta encountered a string of legal problems, most of them rooted in her addiction to heroin, which she'd been taking since 1961, when she was 23 (she'd tried methadone in 1969 but reverted to heroin). She was in and out of rehab throughout the decade, and in 1972, she and her husband Artis Mills were arrested in Texas for heroin possession. However, Artis took full responsibility and received a 10-year jail sentence. He was released in 1981.<br />
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In 1974 Etta was sentenced to undergo treatment for her drug addiction rather than go to jail (for passing bad cheques) and spent 17 months in LA's Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital, where she ballooned to 24 stone (152 kilos). However, this rehab period did not last, and she continued with her substance abuse until, in 1988, she was admitted to the Betty Ford Clinic in California (her addiction never really left her, and even as late as 2010, at the age of 72, Etta was being treated for addiction to painkillers).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Etta put on a lot of weight<br />
following rehab, but lost it<br />
in the early 2000s</td></tr>
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Etta did not record any music for the best part of the 1980s. She continued to perform, most notably in 1984 when she sang When the Saints Go Marching In at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. It wasn't until 1989 - then aged 51 - that Etta returned to the recording studio after signing to Island Records and released Seven Year Itch and Stickin' to My Guns. The success of these albums kick-started a revival of interest in Etta and her work, and throughout the 1990s she recorded more albums and received a number of awards and honours. In 1996, due to its use in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1bsFn0F5vI" target="_blank">Diet Coke TV commercial</a>, Etta's 1961 recording of I Just Wanna Make Love to You, reached number 10 in the UK singles chart.<br />
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In 2008, Etta was portrayed by Beyonce Knowles in the film Cadillac Records, which was based on the 18-year history of Chess Records. Etta had been reportedly critical of Beyonce, particularly when the younger singer performed Etta's signature song At Last at President Barack Obama's inauguration ("She singing my song, she gonna get her ass ripped! I can't stand Beyonce, she ain't no business up there singing! Don't be singing my song that I've been singing forever!"), but these criticisms were later put down to a health condition that was diagnosed that same year - Alzheimer's Disease.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Etta on Dancing with the Stars in<br />
April 2009, aged 70</td></tr>
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Etta made her final TV appearance (recorded April 7th, 2009) performing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqpoWJdYGP0" target="_blank">At Last on the celebrity talent show Dancing with the Stars</a> (she remained seated during the number). Etta continued to tour, but in January 2010, aged 72, she had to cancel dates when she contracted MRSA and was hospitalized as the bug rejected antibiotic treatment.<br />
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On January 14th, 2011 Etta was diagnosed with leukaemia, aged 73, and Artis Mills applied to a judge to grant him access to Etta's bank account in order to pay for her medical bills. Control of Etta's estate had passed to her sons and daughter-in-law. Etta's son Donto fought Artis's application, but the judge granted him $60,000 a month for medical fees.<br />
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She released her final album, The Dreamer, on November 8th, 2011, which included covers of songs by Otis Redding, Guns 'n' Roses and Ray Charles.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An outtake from the photo shoot<br />
for the cover of Etta's final<br />
album, The Dreamer, in 2011</td></tr>
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After being hospitalized in May 2011 with a urinary tract infection and sepsis, Etta's illness became terminal after she was rushed to hospital with breathing problems and Hepatitis C on December 16th, 2011. She was under 24-hour care and was on oxygen<br />
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Discharged from hospital in early 2012, Etta finally passed away on January 20th, 2012 - just five days before her 74th birthday - at Riverside Community Hospital in California. It was just three days after Johnny Otis, the man who discovered her when she was 14 in 1952, had died. Her funeral, led by Rev Al Sharpton, took place in Gardena, California, on Saturday, January 28th, and included musical tributes from Stevie Wonder and Christina Aguilera. Etta was buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.<br />
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<b>A bit of fun:</b> Let's end by remembering Etta the live singer. Here she is performing I Just Wanna Make Love to You at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1993, aged 55 (and about 330lbs!).<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-83186122024696255632016-01-06T10:02:00.001+00:002016-07-07T12:17:01.790+01:00John Gielgud (1904-2000)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> Arthur John Gielgud<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Thursday, April 14th, 1904<br />
<b>Location:</b> London, UK<br />
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<b>Died:</b> Sunday, May 21st, 2000<br />
<b>Location:</b> Aylesbury, UK<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Natural causes<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> English actor and theatre director who dominated the British stage, along with Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, throughout the 20th century. He was an inspiration and mentor to many budding actors who have since gone on to be mentors themselves. He was knighted in 1953, and in 1994 the Globe Theatre was renamed the Gielgud Theatre in his honour. He was twice nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor - for Becket (1964), losing to Peter Ustinov, and winning for Arthur (1981). He was also nominated for three Golden Globes (winning twice, for Arthur and War and Remembrance (1988)), five Emmys (winning one for Summer's Lease (1989)) and eight BAFTAs (winning for Julius Caesar (1953) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and being awarded an Academy Fellowship in 1992).<br />
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John was prolific and highly successful and revered for his work on the stage, but even into his nineties, his output on screen never slowed down. After his late 1980s success with War and Remembrance and Summer's Lease, he launched into his final decade with equal success in Prospero's Books (1991), and appearances in TV series such as Inspector Morse (1993), Alleyn Mysteries (1994) and Scarlett (1994).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John in his final acting role, as the<br />
mute Protagonist, in David Mamet's<br />
Catastrophe short film (2000)</td></tr>
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After his 90th birthday in 1994, he shifted his screen focus back to cinema, appearing in First Knight (1995), Haunted (1995), Shine (1996), The Portrait of a Lady (1996) and Hamlet (1996). His final two years were no less busy - in 1998 he played King Constant in the star-studded mini-series Merlin, alongside Sam Neill, Miranda Richardson, Lena Headey, Helena Bonham Carter, Rutger Hauer, James Earl Jones and Martin Short, while he gave his voice to the 1998 animated film Quest for Camelot, playing the character of Merlin.<br />
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Also in 1998 John played Cockburn in an adaptation of The Tichborne Claimant, opposite Robert Hardy, Charles Gray, Stephen Fry and Dudley Sutton, and played the Pope in the biopic Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett and Christopher Eccleston.<br />
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John's very last screen acting credit was actually in a short film called Catastrophe in which he played The Protagonist. It was a six-minute adaptation of the Samuel Beckett play directed by David Mamet and co-starring Harold Pinter and Rebecca Pidgeon. The 95-year-old John is silent throughout, and his face is only seen in long-shot and for a few seconds in shadowy close-up.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John, aged 95, interviewed for<br />
the BBC in late 1999</td></tr>
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Toward the end of 1999, BBC Newsnight's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z08olO5u-E" target="_blank">Jeremy Paxman interviewed John</a> on the stage of the Old Vic Theatre, with him concluding that if he had his life again, he wouldn't do anything differently.<br />
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John's long-time lover Martin Hensler died in 1999, after which John went into a physical and psychological decline. John passed away "simply of old age" at his home South Pavilion in Wotton Underwood near Aylesbury on May 21st, 2000, five weeks after his 96th birthday. Also that day, the world lost romance novelist Barbara Cartland. That night, the Gielgud Theatre dimmed its lights in respect, and a small memorial service was held at Wotton parish church, attended by Alec Guinness, John Mills, Maggie Smith and Richard Attenborough. His body was cremated at Oxford Crematorium, Headlington.<br />
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<b>A bit of fun:</b> In 1975, John Gielgud appeared as The Grand Inquisitor to Michael Feast's Prisoner in an adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov by the Open University. It's pretty intense stuff as OU programming goes, but shows off Gielgud in all his Shakespearean grandeur.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-49171083365070960052015-12-16T12:46:00.001+00:002016-08-22T11:33:45.499+01:00Tarzan - Part 3 (1949-1960)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Character's first film appearance:</b> Tarzan of the Apes (released January 27th, 1918)<br />
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<b>Character description:</b> Tarzan - aka John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke - is a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his novel Tarzan of the Apes in 1912. He was a feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani great apes after being separated from his parents when their ship was marooned off the African coast by mutineers. As an adult he experiences modern civilisation for the first time, largely rejecting it and choosing to remain in the wild as a heroic adventurer.</div>
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This is the third in a multi-part entry charting what happened to the various actors who have played Tarzan over the years. <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">Click here for the silent era (1918-1929)</a>, or <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-2-1932-1948.html" target="_blank">click here for the 1930s and 1940s (1932-1948)</a>. Or read on to find out about the Tarzans of the 1950s...</div>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Lex Barker</span></u></b> (born Alexander Crichlow Barker Jr)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1949-1953</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Thursday, May 8th, 1919</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Rye, New York, USA</div>
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<b>Died:</b> Friday, May 11th, 1973</div>
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<b>Location:</b> New York, USA</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack</div>
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Although Lex played football as a youth, he was no champion sportsman like many of his predecessors. However, he was a respected military veteran, having enlisted in the US Army in 1941, rising to the rank of Major. He was wounded in the head and leg during action in Sicily, recuperating at a military hospital in Arkansas, before moving to Los Angeles after the war and breaking into acting.<br />
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Lex's pre-Tarzan roles were nothing to write home about. He had various uncredited bit parts in films such as Doll Face (1945), Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946) and Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House (1948), but it wasn't until he landed the role of Tarzan of the Apes in Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949) - replacing Johnny Weissmuller after 16 years - that he made it big. At 6ft 4in he was an impressive Lord Greystoke, and appeared as Tarzan in four more productions - Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950), Tarzan's Peril (1951, filmed partially in Kenya, making it the first Tarzan film shot in Africa), Tarzan's Savage Fury (1952) and Tarzan and the She-Devil (1953).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lex as Tarzan with Cheeta</td></tr>
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Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs visited the set of Tarzan and the Slave Girl in early 1950. By this point he was suffering from Parkinson's Disease, and this set visit was to be his last public appearance: he died on March 19th, 1950, just four days after the cinematic release of the film. He was 74 years old.<br />
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During his time as Tarzan, Lex did appear in other roles - he appeared in the TV series Tales of Tomorrow, playing a space explorer in the episode Red Dust (broadcast May 2nd, 1952). He also appeared in 1952's Battles of Chief Pontiac, playing Lieutenant Kent McIntire to Lon Chaney Jr's title character in a film set before the Revolution.<br />
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After hanging up Tarzan's loincloth, Lex continued to secure roles in films such as Thunder Over the Plains (1953), Black Devils of Kali (1954), The Yellow Mountain (1954) and The Price of Fear (1956), but by the late 1950s he was finding it harder to secure work, so decided to move to Europe to try his luck, settling in Spain's Costa Brava. After all, he was multilingual, able to speak English, French, Italian, Spanish and some German. On the Continent, he found work in Captain Falcon (1958), Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and Terror of the Red Mask (1960).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As Old Shatterhand in 1962's The<br />
Treasure of the Silver Lake</td></tr>
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Lex even managed to secure the title role in Robin Hood and the Pirates (1960), FBI Agent Joe Como in two Dr Mabuse films (1961-62), and the title role in 1962's Dr Sibelius. However, it was in the 1960s that Lex's career got its second wind as he played a number of characters in film adaptations of the books of German author Karl May - Old Shatterhand in seven films between 1962-68, Kara Ben Nemsi in three films (1964-65) and Dr Karl Sternau in three films (1965)<br />
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By 1966 Lex had become a major star in Germany and was even awarded the Bambi Award for Best Foreign Actor that year. He also turned his hand to singing, recording two songs in 1965 - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2bYvhfsIdc" target="_blank">I'll Be on the Way to You Tomorrow</a>, and Girl in Silk and Velvet.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lex in his final acting role, Rod Serling's<br />
Night Gallery, in January 1972</td></tr>
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Lex was a bit of a ladies' man too, having married five times. In the 1940s he was married to Constance Thurlow, daughter of a metal manufacturing magnate; he was married to actress Arlene Dahl (mother of actor Lorenzo Lamas) for a year; his third wife was the Hollywood icon <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/lana-turner-1921-1995.html" target="_blank">Lana Turner</a>, although this marriage seemed laced with something darker - in her 1988 memoir Detour: A Hollywood Tragedy, Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane claims Lex repeatedly molested and raped her from the ages of 10 to 13, leading to Turner divorcing him in 1957 (the actress allegedly ordered him out of the house at gunpoint when she found out). Lex's fourth wife was Swedish actress Irene Labhardt, who killed herself in 1962 after five years of marriage to Lex; and his fifth and final wife was Tita Cervera, aka Miss Spain 1961.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lex, aged 53, with lover Karen<br />
Kondazian, then 22, in May 1972</td></tr>
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Lex's final acting appearances were back on US screens. In January 1971 he appeared in an episode of The Name of the Game called The Man Who Killed a Ghost, in which a reporter played by Robert Wagner sets out to expose the wholesome image of Western star Will Cheyenne (played by Lex). Two months later he appeared in an episode of crime series The FBI, while his final acting work was in The Waiting Room segment of an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery broadcast on January 26th, 1972, playing an outlaw awaiting punishment in a saloon bar.<br />
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On Friday, May 11th, 1973, just three days after his 54th birthday, Lex was walking down Lexington Avenue in New York City, on his way to meet his lover Karen Kondazian, when he collapsed and died from a heart attack. The funeral took place in the Big Apple, and his remains cremated and taken back to Spain by his wife, Tita.<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Gordon Scott</span></u></b> (born Gordon Merrill Werschkul)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1955-60</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Tuesday, August 3rd, 1926</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Portland, Oregon, USA</div>
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<b>Died:</b> Monday, April 30th, 2007</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Baltimore, Maryland, USA</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Complications following heart surgery<br />
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The first time Gordon appeared on the cinema screen was as Tarzan of the Apes in Tarzan's Hidden Jungle (1955). He was discovered by a talent scout while working as a lifeguard in Las Vegas's Sahara Hotel and Casino, and it was undoubtedly his 6ft 3in frame which did the job. Movie producer Sol Lesser asked Gordon to change his name from Werschkul as it sounded too like Weissmuller, and so he became Gordon Scott.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gordon, aged 39, in Hercules<br />
and the Princess of Troy (1965)</td></tr>
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After signing a seven-year contract, Gordon played Tarzan in five films in total - Tarzan's Hidden Jungle (1955), Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957), Tarzan's Fight for Life (1958), Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959) and Tarzan the Magnificent (1960), as well as a TV movie made up of edited-together pilot episodes, called Tarzan and the Trappers (1958).<br />
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During his time playing Tarzan, Gordon was married to his co-star, Vera Miles, but the couple divorced in 1960 - the year Gordon decided to hang up the loin cloth for fear of being typecast, and moved to Italy to seek Continental work. It was there he became quite a popular action film star, especially in "swords and sandals" epics such as Goliath and the Vampires (1961), Duel of the Titans (1961), A Queen for Caesar (1962) and Goliath and the Rebel Slave (1963).<br />
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However, as the market for this genre faded away, Gordon tried his luck at Westerns and spy-fi films - such as Buffalo Bill (1965) and Danger!! Death Ray (1967) - but these were not successful, and Gordon's final acting work was as John Sutton in the Italian crime drama Top Secret (aka Segretissimo), released in May 1967.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gordon with fan Roger Thomas, who<br />
he lived with between 2001-07</td></tr>
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Aged 41, Gordon gave up acting and spent the rest of his life enjoying the attention from fans of Tarzan and his other 1960s action films on the convention circuit. He did, however, appear in two documentaries about the history of Tarzan: firstly, 1997's Investigating Tarzan, and later the 1998 film made by British chat show host Jonathan Ross, In Search of Tarzan.<br />
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Gordon actually spent the last six years of his life living in the spare room of his number one fan, Roger Thomas, and his wife Betty, in Baltimore. The Thomases had visited Hollywood to look round the memorabilia and souvenir stores in 2000, and mentioned to shopkeepers that his idol was Gordon Scott (he had all his films on tape) and would love to meet him. A month after returning home, Roger had a call from Gordon, who was then living in Arizona, saying he'd like to come over and visit them.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gordon in hospital in the<br />
last few weeks of his life</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It was March 16th, 2001 when Roger and Betty Thomas picked Gordon Scott up from the airport. The former Tarzan was then 74 years old, and although they first saw him sitting in a wheelchair, Gordon was certainly fit enough not to need it (quite why he was in the wheelchair is lost in the mists of time). They took Gordon to their home on Pontiac Avenue, put him in the back bedroom, thinking he'd stay for a few days - but he ended up staying for six years, the rest of his life! He paid rent only occasionally, but fan Roger didn't care. After Gordon's death, he said: "From childhood up, he was everything in the world to me. If I could be like him, the bullies wouldn't bother me. He represented an ideal."<br />
<br />
Gordon had a number of operations on his heart in early 2007, but he died of complications following the surgery at 10.50am on April 30th, 2007, at the age of 80, at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He had apparently been estranged from his family for some time. He is buried in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.</div>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Denny Miller</span></u></b> (born Dennis Linn Miller)</div>
<div>
<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1959</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Wednesday, April 25th, 1934</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Bloomington, Indiana, USA</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Died:</b> Tuesday, September 9th, 2014</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Las Vegas, Nevada, USA</div>
<div>
<b>Cause of death:</b> Motor neurone disease</div>
<br />
Denny had perhaps one of the most enduring acting careers of all the Tarzans after his one outing as the Lord of the Jungle in Tarzan, the Ape Man in 1959. Denny played basketball at the University of California in Los Angeles as a youngster, and it was while working as a furniture remover to pay his way through school that he was spotted by a talent scout for MGM and signed up, becoming the first ever blond Tarzan.<br />
<br />
Tarzan, the Ape Man was made on the cheap and took a lot of its incidental footage from old Johnny Weissmuller films. Although Denny was signed up for 20 months, he worked only eight of them, but this brief sojourn into the jungle did nothing to harm what became a glittering career.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denny as Duke Shannon<br />
in Wagon Train, when he<br />
was aged 30</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After Tarzan - for which he was paid $180 a week - the 25-year-old Denny began to specialise in the Western television shows popular at the time, and made appearances in everything from Have Gun - Will Travel (1960), Laramie (1960) and The Rifleman (1960), to Stagecoach West (1961), The Deputy (1961) and Love in a Goldfish Bowl (1961). The year 1961 proved a major turning point in his career after he secured the role of Duke Shannon in what would go on to be more than 100 episodes of the series Wagon Train between 1961-64 (sometimes credited as Scott Miller).<br />
<br />
When Wagon Train ended in April 1964, it wasn't long until he secured another regular role, that of Mike McCluskey in the romantic comedy series Mona McCluskey opposite Juliet Prowse. This ran for 26 episodes between 1965-66, after which Denny fell into a plethora of guest star roles in series such as The Girl from UNCLE (1966), The Fugitive (1966), The High Chaparral (1968), Hawaii Five-O (1969) and Mission Impossible (1971). These guest star roles carried on well into the 1980s, securing a semi-regular turn as Max Flowers in soap Dallas in 1984.<br />
<br />
Denny's acting career came to an end in the 1990s: after playing Sheriff Owen Kearney in Lonesome Dove: The Series (1994-95), he drew a line on his CV with the role of Noah McBride in a two-part story in the series Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, broadcast in February 1996. He was aged 62 and ready to retire, and in retirement he stayed for nine years, until he was tempted back before the cameras to play Horace the miner in the $1.2m TV film Hell to Pay, which reunited ten legendary Western stars, including Lee Majors, Buck Taylor and James Drury, among others.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denny lived until he was 80 years old,<br />
and always advocated healthy living<br />
and fitness</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Another of Denny's high profile roles was as the yellow-clad <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMpgYzW-XY4" target="_blank">Gorton's Fisherman</a> on TV seafood commercials for more than a decade until 2005, after which he was replaced by Craig Littler. Also in later years he wrote an autobiography entitled Didn't You Used to Be What's His Name?, and a book about obesity called Toxic Waist? Get to Know Sweat! (aka Me Tarzan! You Train - Without Pain!). Even toward the end of his life, Denny could still fit into the loincloth he'd worn as Tarzan, and drove around in a car with a personalised numberplate - X TARZAN.<br />
<br />
In January 2014, at the age of 79, Denny was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, a form of Motor Neurone Disease. He passed away in Las Vegas on September 9th that year, aged 80 - before he died, he'd been the oldest living Tarzan actor.<br />
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<br />
To read the previous chapter about the silent era Tarzans, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">click here</a>, and the previous chapter about the Tarzans 1932-48, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-2-1932-1948.html" target="_blank">click here</a>. The next chapter in the Tarzan story, looking to the 1960s, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/tarzan-part-4-1962-1972.html" target="_blank">can be found here</a>.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-48223603432765759722015-10-30T10:28:00.001+00:002015-12-22T14:14:32.294+00:00Audie Murphy (1925-1971)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> Audie Leon Murphy<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Saturday, June 20th, 1925<br />
<b>Location:</b> Hunt County, Texas, USA<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> Friday, May 28th, 1971<br />
<b>Location:</b> Brush Mountain, Virginia, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Plane crash<br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> Audie was one of the most decorated soldiers in the US military during World War Two (27 in all), receiving every major combat award for valour there was, as well as awards from the French and Belgian militaries. At the age of 19 Audie received the Medal of Honor after single-handedly holding off an entire squad of Nazi soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France, then leading a successful counter-attack while out of ammunition and wounded. After the war his heroism was rightfully celebrated on American shores and he was cast as an all-American hero in various war and Western films, including The Red Badge of Courage (1951), Drums Across the River (1954) and The Quiet American (1958), after being "discovered" by <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/james-cagney-1899-1986.html" target="_blank">James Cagney</a>.<br />
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As you can see above, war hero Audie died young, aged 45, and his film career was going great guns right up until the end. Throughout the 1960s he'd continued to star in films and did not need to make the transition to television that many of his greater colleagues had been forced to do. However, his fate suddenly cut short what was turning out to be a pretty amazing life - from war hero to movie star.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Audie in his full dress US<br />
Army uniform</td></tr>
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Audie was not a content man. The horrors of war had had their effect on him and he suffered from what we know today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He used to sleep with a loaded gun under his pillow and sought peace in sleeping pills. A post-service medical in June 1947 found Audie suffered headaches, vomiting and nightmares about war. In the mid-1960s he admitted he was hooked on the sedative Placidyl (aka jelly-bellies or pickles) and went cold turkey by locking himself in a hotel room for a week to break the addiction.<br />
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Audie's undiagnosed and untreated PTSD manifested itself in mood swings and erratic behaviour, and on one occasion around 1950 he held his first wife, the actress Wanda Hendrix, at gunpoint. He cried tears of guilt when he saw newsreel footage of German orphans. In an effort to turn his suffering into something positive, Audie wrote poetry, and also highlighted his own fight against what was then known as "shell shock" or "battle fatigue" to try and help those returning from the Korean and Vietnam wars.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As Jesse James in A Time for Dying,<br />
aged 44</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Toward the end of his life he developed a cash-flow problem, but he turned down offers of alcohol and tobacco commercials as he did not want to set a bad example to his young fans. His debts were down to a gambling habit, and in 1968 Audie revealed he'd lost $260,000 in an Algerian oil deal, and was also being investigated by the Inland Revenue for unpaid taxes.<br />
<br />
Audie's final project was ironically called A Time for Dying (1969), a Western in which he played the legendary Jesse James, but the lead stars were actually Richard Lapp and Robert Random (exactly: <i>who?</i>). Prior to his death, Audie had been offered the role of the villain Scorpio in the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry. The role went to Andy Robinson instead.<br />
<br />
On the morning of Friday, May 28th, 1971, Audie and four other passengers climbed aboard an Aero Commander 680 Super twin-engine aircraft at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta, destined for a business meeting in Martinsville, 284 nautical miles and 100 minutes away. Pilot Herman Butler requested a weather report before departure, and all seemed well, and the plane took off at 9.10am. However, conditions deteriorated during the flight, and at 11.30am, residents of Galax in Virginia - some 60 miles west of Martinsville - saw the aircraft circling in and around the clouds 150ft above ground level. Shortly after, the pilot tried to land the plane on a four-lane highway in Galax, but after making a pass over the city at treetop level, the aircraft left the area and headed for the Blue Ridge Mountains.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Audie pictured in<br />
October 1970, aged 45</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The last time anybody had any communication with the aircraft was at 11.49am when the pilot contacted Roanoke's Woodrum Airport requesting permission to land. However, he did not indicate to the flight authorities that he was in any kind of trouble. At 12.08pm the aircraft smashed into the side of Brush Mountain at 2,700ft at high speed level altitude. The collision into the heavily wooded slope killed all six people aboard, including Herman Butler and Audie Murphy, plus Jack Littleton, Raymond Prater, Claude Crosby and Kim Dodey. Butler had over 8,000 hours of flight experience, but was not rated to fly under instrument flight rules and had only six hours of experience flying an Aero Commander.<br />
<br />
A search was launched that afternoon for the missing aircraft, but due to poor weather conditions, the wreckage was not discovered until Monday, May 31st, at 2.30pm, about 300ft below the summit of Brush Mountain. Rescue workers hiked up four miles of steep terrain to reach the crash site, and found Audie's body, along with two others, had been thrown further uphill from the wreckage. The other three were found inside the cabin and were badly burned.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Aero Commander crash site</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Incidentally, it was the second aircraft crash on the mountain within 14 hours. The night prior, a single-engine Cessna 177 with four passengers (including a Roanoke vet and his wife) went down, killing all aboard. The cause of this accident was severe pilot inexperience and alcoholic impairment.<br />
<br />
Audie was buried with full military honours on Monday, June 7th, 1971 and buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. His grave site is the cemetery's second most visited after John F Kennedy's. The headstones of Medal of Honor recipients are usually decorated with gold leaf but Audie had previously instructed that no such decoration be made, as he wanted to be as inconspicuous as other war veterans in the cemetery. The headstone says he was born in 1924, an error taken from falsified materials in his military records.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Audie's coffin is loaded aboard a plane<br />
at Atlanta on its way to services in<br />
California, June 1971</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In December 1971, Audie's family filed a $10m lawsuit against the estates of pilot Herman Butler and Audie's fellow passengers Colby and Littleton, as well as Aero Commander Inc, Colorado Aviation Company, and Telstar Inc (Audie was a business director for Telstar Leisure Investments).<br />
<br />
The National Transportations Safety Board issued an investigation report in June 1972 which ruled that the aircraft had not suffered any malfunction, but that the probable cause was pilot Butler continuing to try and navigate visually in poor weather conditions at an altitude too low for the terrain, and that he also tried to use flight instruments he was not qualified to operate.<br />
<br />
In 1974 a large granite marker was erected just off the Appalachian Trail, close to the crash site.<br />
<br />
Four years after Audie had died and his family had launched the $10m lawsuit against various defendants, a jury awarded the Murphy family $2.5m in damages to be paid by the aircraft's owner, Colorado Aviation Inc, of Denver, Colorado.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-58672463400129101782015-10-28T13:38:00.001+00:002015-10-30T08:45:34.137+00:00Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiec04FZNxxL6gX6-UiUFTbGtpNvusYa-m66BxjbCdnlNWcXmYkNNZQSqQzDPILftHREm62zkQ02CU_VQdLcMlugyZ6XG5NUeAWNYDTUdPs-Cvw9fKoL0jbDqXSGOhNZDl-iLbUdhbUeXE/s1600/ib.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiec04FZNxxL6gX6-UiUFTbGtpNvusYa-m66BxjbCdnlNWcXmYkNNZQSqQzDPILftHREm62zkQ02CU_VQdLcMlugyZ6XG5NUeAWNYDTUdPs-Cvw9fKoL0jbDqXSGOhNZDl-iLbUdhbUeXE/s200/ib.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> Ingrid Bergman<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Sunday, August 29th, 1915<br />
<b>Location:</b> Stockholm, Sweden<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> Sunday, August 29th, 1982<br />
<b>Location:</b> London, UK<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Breast cancer<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> Multi-award winning actress who won Oscars for Gaslight (1944), Anastasia (1956) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and was nominated a further four times for For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), The Bells of St Mary's (1945), Joan of Arc (1948) and Autumn Sonata (1978) - losing to Jennifer Jones, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/joan-crawford-1904-1977.html" target="_blank">Joan Crawford</a>, Jane Wyman and Jane Fonda respectively (it seems women whose names began with J were her nemeses!). She was also nominated for a Golden Globe eight times (winning four), an Emmy three times (winning two) and a BAFTA twice (winning one). Other films of note include Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941), Casablanca (1942), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Under Capricorn (1949), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) and The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964).<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Ingrid's career - as you can tell from the paragraph above - was solidly successful, and she was continually recognised and rewarded for that. However, by the year 1970, when Ingrid turned 55, her acting appearances began to slow. In October 1970 she appeared opposite Anthony Quinn in A Walk in the Spring Rain, then didn't make another movie for three years - the longest gap in her CV up to then.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggAGtuADy91_MefIvuap_CNUFTbG591dVkHRpsaWDrmL64CYNctxBrKr_f9NaGbD0-XxAafvCiET7qg4c713AFt2BCRliZXhwsWH_F7fy6bLid1Vza35vYe7anVDsr7CvSAwpyxDFtxsg/s1600/ibmurder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggAGtuADy91_MefIvuap_CNUFTbG591dVkHRpsaWDrmL64CYNctxBrKr_f9NaGbD0-XxAafvCiET7qg4c713AFt2BCRliZXhwsWH_F7fy6bLid1Vza35vYe7anVDsr7CvSAwpyxDFtxsg/s200/ibmurder.jpg" width="176" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ingrid aged 59 in Murder on the<br />
Orient Express</td></tr>
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After serving as President of the Jury at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Ingrid, aged 58, returned to the screen to play the title role in the family comedy From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler (aka The Hideaways), which subsequently led to her Oscar-winning performance as Greta in Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express the following year. It was a star-studded cast also including Sean Connery, Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, John Gielgud and Anthony Perkins.<br />
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In the final six years of her life, Ingrid appeared in only three films, principally because in 1974, aged 59, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she battled and lived with for the following eight years. Her final roles were Contessa Sanziani in Vincente Minnelli's A Matter of Time (1976), Charlotte Andergast in Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata (1978), and Golda Meir in the television film A Woman Called Golda, which told the story of the Russian-born, Wisconsin-raised woman who rose to become Israel's Prime Minister in the 1960s. This film was broadcast on April 26th, 1982, and posthumously won Ingrid a Golden Globe and an Emmy - a fitting swansong for a woman who would be dead four months later.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In her final role, Golda Meir, in<br />
1982, the year she died of the<br />
breast cancer she'd been battling<br />
for eight years</td></tr>
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Ingrid did appear on the stage in her final years, however, most notably in The Constant Wife (1973) and Waters of the Moon (1977-78). She also appeared at awards ceremonies, including the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award Tribute to Alfred Hitchcock in 1979, and in 1980 wrote her autobiography, with the help of Alan Burgess (the man who wrote the biography of Christian missionary Gladys Aylward, whom Ingrid had played in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness).<br />
<br />
It's a surprise A Woman Called Golda ever got made (with Ingrid, at least). The actress was quite ill at the time of filming, with rapidly spreading breast cancer, and it was impossible to insure her for the shoot. It was said later that if anybody had been aware of how ill Ingrid was, nobody would have continued with the project. Ingrid was frequently ill during filming, but tried not to show it. Four months after A Woman Called Golda was broadcast, Ingrid died on her 67th birthday. Her daughter Pia accepted her posthumous Emmy Award on September 19th, 1982 - three weeks after her mother's death.<br />
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Ingrid was cremated at Kensal Green Cemetery in London and her ashes returned to Sweden, where they were scattered in the sea around Dannholmen island off the coast of Fjallbacka on the country's west coast, where Ingrid had spent many summers in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Some of her ashes were retained and placed next to her parents' ashes in Stockholm's northern cemetery.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnkXNYi-q6b7pMQbnhxI4fkjIw8yUivl7BbZnRkaZFtBSCRhe9tgnGX6ynaq816y6BmPSG7Cucvy7uttblTrWVbl-glr1QcooZOtkEVCacn3yun1zXCOsycQcgDqyGfZEEo9SzdP5eMMg/s1600/ib1982.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnkXNYi-q6b7pMQbnhxI4fkjIw8yUivl7BbZnRkaZFtBSCRhe9tgnGX6ynaq816y6BmPSG7Cucvy7uttblTrWVbl-glr1QcooZOtkEVCacn3yun1zXCOsycQcgDqyGfZEEo9SzdP5eMMg/s320/ib1982.jpg" width="292" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By 1982, Ingrid's health had rapidly deteriorated. She is<br />
pictured here outside her daughter Pia's house in New York</td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-35079814086323718762015-10-27T13:05:00.003+00:002015-12-16T12:48:04.842+00:00Tarzan - Part 2 (1932-1948)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Character's first film appearance:</b> Tarzan of the Apes (released January 27th, 1918)<br />
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<b>Character description:</b> Tarzan - aka John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke - is a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his novel Tarzan of the Apes in 1912. He was a feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani great apes after being separated from his parents when their ship was marooned off the African coast by mutineers. As an adult he experiences modern civilisation for the first time, largely rejecting it and choosing to remain in the wild as a heroic adventurer.</div>
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This is the second in a multi-part entry charting what happened to the various actors who have played Tarzan over the years. <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">Click here for the silent era (1918-1929)</a>, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">click here for 1949-60</a>, or read on to find out about the Tarzans of the 1930s and 40s...</div>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Johnny Weissmuller</span></u></b> (born Peter Johann Weißmüller)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1932-1948</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Thursday, June 2nd, 1904</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Freidorf, Hungary</div>
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<b>Died:</b> Friday, January 20th, 1984</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Acapulco, Mexico</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Pulmonary edema</div>
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The best known and most prolific Tarzan was Johnny Weissmuller, who appeared in 12 Tarzan productions - Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Tarzan and His Mate (1934), Tarzan Escapes (1936), Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939), Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941), Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942), Tarzan Triumphs (1943), Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943), Tarzan and the Amazons (1945), Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), Tarzan and the Huntress (1947) and Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948).<br />
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When Johnny first played the Apeman he was 28 years old, but by his last appearance he was clocking in at 44. There's a fuller, stand-alone entry on this blog for <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/johnny-weissmuller.html" target="_blank">Johnny Weissmuller</a> here.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b><u>Buster Crabbe</u></b></span> (born Clarence Linden Crabbe II)</div>
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1933</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Friday, February 7th, 1908</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Oakland, California, USA</div>
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<b>Died:</b> Saturday, April 23rd, 1983</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Scottsdale, Arizona, USA</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack<br />
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Buster's one outing as Tarzan came about when producer Sol Lesser obtained the rights to make Tarzan films from an independent company which had gone bust. Although MGM had the current rights to Tarzan (the Weissmuller films), Lesser's independent contract was still valid, so he set about casting a new Apeman for Tarzan the Fearless. MGM paid Lesser to delay release of his film until their Tarzan the Ape Man had been released. MGM debuted Weissmuller in March 1932, while Tarzan the Fearless was released as both a 12-part serial and a 71-minute feature film in August 1933.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buster as Flash Gordon in 1936,<br />
aged 28</td></tr>
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Interestingly, the Lesser contract (dated 1928) stipulated that Tarzan must be played by <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">James Pierce</a>, but the producer wanted a younger, slimmer Apeman, so he offered Pierce $5,000 to step aside, which he duly did. Lesser cast Buster Crabbe, who had just played the Tarzan-like character of Kaspa the Lion Man in 1933's King of the Jungle, and who was a successful Olympic swimmer (he won a bronze at the 1928 Games and a gold in 1932).<br />
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After several years in uncredited bit parts, often as sportsmen, Buster's big breakthrough was the role of Tarzan (which he'd briefly screen tested for in 1931 with MGM). Although he was only to play Tarzan once, he became known for his heroic parts, going on to play Flash Gordon in three very successful serials between 1936-40, Buck Rogers in a 1939 serial, and Billy the Kid/ Billy Carson in 36 serials between 1941-46.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buster as Buck Rogers in 1939, aged 31,<br />
and in the 1979 TV series as Brigadier<br />
Gordon, aged 71, alongside Gil Gerrard</td></tr>
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Between 1951-54, Buster had his own children's weekday evening show on New York City's Channel 9 (WOR-TV), and latterly WJZ-TV (Channel 7). Between 1955-57 Buster played Captain Michael Gallant in the TV series Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, and continued to specialise in Western productions, including Badman's Country (1958), Gunfighters of Abilene (1960) and Arizona Raiders (1965). This last film, a vehicle for war hero Audie Murphy, was Buster's last acting job for 14 years after he decided to retire at the age 57. He became a stockbroker and a businessman, running a swimming pool manufacturing firm, and in the 1950s purchased the Adirondack campus of the Adirondack-Florida School, a swim camp for the under-14s.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1y542ge6yECevKRqVgiNMn0aONjj6eNpzl-M1_nC4-vCZ5azY28AL9u7dj2PnoUGdV2kg1KXMq_zke7OPYTqRlAlDsxVfKRGSRA6UiZn8_Gu-mcfuvciWqm1IiTjS0fBVwLZqaoOWAF0/s1600/bcbilly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1y542ge6yECevKRqVgiNMn0aONjj6eNpzl-M1_nC4-vCZ5azY28AL9u7dj2PnoUGdV2kg1KXMq_zke7OPYTqRlAlDsxVfKRGSRA6UiZn8_Gu-mcfuvciWqm1IiTjS0fBVwLZqaoOWAF0/s200/bcbilly.jpg" width="161" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buster as Billy the Kid in<br />
the 1940s</td></tr>
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Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s Buster promoted his interests in the "package pool" company Cascade Industries, and swimming pools were sold by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prSqIUC5rGQ" target="_blank">"Buster Crabbe Dealers"</a> in America's eastern and southern states as late as 1990.<br />
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Buster also appeared in TV commercials for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL4FJV4Xg44" target="_blank">Continental Airlines</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKx_34Gj4X0" target="_blank">Hormel chili sauce</a>, muscular heat rubs and male body girdles. Buster also continued to swim well into his sixties, and in 1971 - at the age of 63 - set a new world record in the 400m freestyle for his age group. In August 1975 he took part in a Tarzan reunion in Los Angeles to mark the 100th anniversary of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs' birth (this can be seen in the <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">James Pierce section</a> of the first part of this Tarzan series).<br />
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His final few roles included the 1979 comedy Swim Team, a cameo in a 1979 episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (as the cleverly named Brigadier Gordon), the low budget sci-fi horror The Alien Dead (1980), and a 1981 episode of BJ and the Bear.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buster on February 2nd, 1983, days<br />
before his 75th (and last) birthday</td></tr>
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This brief flurry of activity ended with the 74-year-old Buster's sorry swansong as veteran Western actor Duke Montana in the 1982 comedy The Comeback Trail, which sees two hapless movie producers cast Montana in a new Western, in the belief that he is too old to carry out the strenuous stunts and will die, leaving them as the sole beneficiaries of Montana's life insurance.<br />
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It was an unfortunate way to end his career. The film was released in March 1982, and Buster passed away just 13 months later.</div>
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On April 23rd, 1983, at the age of 75, Buster tripped over a waste bin at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, and suffered a fatal heart attack. He was interred at the Green Acres Memorial Park in Scottsdale.<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Herman Brix</span></u></b> (born Harold Herman Brix)</div>
<div>
<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1935/1938</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Saturday, May 19th, 1906</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Tacoma, Washington, USA</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Died:</b> Saturday, February 24th, 2007</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Santa Monica, California, USA</div>
<div>
<b>Cause of death:</b> Hip fracture<br />
<br />
Herman was yet another Tarzan whose main career was in athletics - he played football in the 1926 Rose Bowl and won an Olympic silver medal in 1928 in the shot put (he threw it just over 51ft). In 1929 Herman moved from Washington to Los Angeles and made friends with Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who helped him get into acting.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Herman was an Olympic<br />
medal winner in the shot put</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Ironically, Herman was cast as the MGM Tarzan in 1931 for Tarzan the Ape Man, but when he broke his shoulder filming the sport film Touchdown, he was dropped and Johnny Weissmuller was cast. The rest is history, but at least Herman did get his shot at playing Tarzan, in the 1935 12-part serial The New Adventures of Tarzan, which was partly filmed in Guatemala. Herman did all his own stunts, but due to financial problems, the production began to run out of money and although he received expenses, he never got paid a salary.<br />
<br />
In 1938 a second serial, Tarzan and the Green Goddess, was edited together from footage and rushes from the 1935 shoot, which helped keep Herman in the spotlight but damaged his career as he was typecast in the public's minds as Tarzan, when he really wanted to branch out into better work. As a result, Herman changed his professional name for 1939's My Son is Guilty and became Bruce Bennett, appearing in many Columbia Pictures productions and acting under the assumed name for the next 40 years, in such titles as Atlantic Convoy (1942), Sahara (1943) with Humphrey Bogart, Mildred Pierce (1945) with <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/JoanCrawford" target="_blank">Joan Crawford</a>, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), again with Bogart, and Angels in the Outfield (1951), with Janet Leigh. He even found time to serve in the US Navy during World War Two.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After changing his name to Bruce, Herman's<br />
career took off, although 1961's The Fiend<br />
of Dope Island was no classic</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
He also started to branch into the growing medium of television, taking work in series such as The Texan (1958), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Laramie (1960), several Perry Masons (1958-65) and Daktari (1968). But by the late 1960s, Herman/ Bruce was getting to pensionable age and the roles began to dry up (indeed many of his career choices had been lamentable, such as sharing screen time with Lon Chaney Jr in the cheap sci-fi romp The Alligator Man (1959) and writing and starring in the woeful B-movie The Fiend of Dope Island (1961)).<br />
<br />
In 1970 he secured the role of Bert Daniels in the TV movie Lassie: Well of Love, which took him into the sequel TV series in 1970-71. His last regular part was as a lowly lab assistant in August 1973 sci-fi B-movie The Clones, after which he disappeared for seven years.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bruce in 1993, aged 87,<br />
with his 1928 shot</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
His final credit was playing John Vandenberk in a Dutch film released in March 1980 entitled Laat de dokter maar schuiven, a sequel to 1974's Help! The Doctor is Drowning (don't ask). Herman only got the part after the producers failed in their initial bid to cast John Wayne in the part of a rich American returning to his roots to die. It was perhaps just as well - Herman was 74 years old with another 27 years left in him by this point; John Wayne died in June 1979, so may well have scuppered the filming of the movie!</div>
<br />
Herman stayed active in retirement, but shied away from personal publicity. He worked as a master salesman on the West Coast for a Los Angeles vending machine business and a real state investor. In 2002, at the age of 96, he went skydiving, at an altitude of 10,000ft, over Lake Tahoe, and also had a book about his life published, entitled Please Don't Call Me Tarzan. He was the first Tarzan to reach the grand old age of 100 on May 19th, 2006, but passed away eight months later at UCLA Medical Center, California, with complications arising from a broken hip.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bruce pictured signing autographs in<br />
October 2001, aged 95</td></tr>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Glenn Morris</span></u></b> (born Glenn Edgar Morris)</div>
<div>
<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1938</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Wednesday, June 18th, 1912</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Simla, Colorado, USA</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Died:</b> Thursday, January 31st, 1974</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Palo Alto, California, USA</div>
<div>
<b>Cause of death:</b> Congestive heart failure<br />
<br />
Glenn was yet another Tarzan with an athletic background. He first started setting records when he was in high school (his record in the 220m hurdles stood for 40 years), and qualified to compete in the decathlon at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where he scored a record breaking 7,900 points, winning gold. It is said Adolf Hitler was a great fan of his, and offered 6ft 2in Glenn $50,000 to stay in Germany and appear in sports films, which he declined. During these Games, however, Glenn did have an affair with German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, but he ditched her when he flew back to the US after the Games. In her 1987 memoir, Leni wrote: "We couldn't control our feelings. I imagined that he was the man I could marry. I had lost my head completely. I forgot almost everything, even my work. Never before had I experienced such passion."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Glenn, aged 24, with German<br />
filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl<br />
at the 1936 Olympics</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Glenn's athletic success earned him kudos back home: he was welcomed back to Simla on September 12th, 1936, by a crowd of 5,000, and the day was named Glenn Morris Day. He got various jobs commentating sport for NBC, and in 1937 a short called Decathlon Champion: The Story of Glenn Morris was produced. It was after this that Glenn was cast as Tarzan in Tarzan's Revenge (after producer Sol Lesser considered baseball hero Lou Gehrig, but discounted him because of his skinny legs!). However, the 70-minute feature did not go down well, with critics highlighting Glenn's lack of acting skills.<br />
<br />
Tarzan's Revenge was released in January 1938, and Glenn had just one more turn before the cameras before he ditched Hollywood for good. In September 1938 he played Spencer in the comedy Hold That Co-Ed, but that was it - after that he went into insurance, and in 1940 played a handful of games for the Detroit Lions football team and the Columbus Bullies, before injury cut short his athletic career.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs<br />
with Glenn in 1937</td></tr>
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In the 1940s he joined the US Navy and served in the Pacific during World War Two, but was wounded and treated for psychological trauma for several months in a San Francisco naval hospital. Post-war, he worked in construction for 12 years, and as a steel rigger for the Atomic Energy Commission, but he reportedly fell on hard times and spent a while as a parking lot attendant, and battled alcoholism. He lived out his final years in Menlo Park, California and as a patient in veterans' hospitals, pursuing an intense interest in UFOs.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Glenn and his gold medal on <br />
September 12th, 1936, known<br />
in Colorado as Glenn Morris Day</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 1967, when Glenn was aged 55, he was too ill to attend his own induction ceremony into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, where he was proclaimed the "world's greatest athlete". Glenn donated his Olympic gold medal to the Hall of Fame, but it was then passed, along with much of Glenn's sporting memorabilia, to his former high school in Simla, which gave an annual Glenn Morris Award for athletic and academic excellence. In April 2011, Simla High School donated the gold medal to Colorado State University.</div>
<br />
Glenn died of congestive heart failure "and other complications" at the veterans' hospital in Palo Alto, California, in January 1974, aged 61, and was buried in the Garden of Inspiration at the Skylawn Memorial Park in San Mateo, California.<br />
<br />
In 2012 a novel called <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/ci_21243450/terry-frei-dark-secret-from-berling-olympics-haunted" target="_blank">Olympic Affair</a> was published by Terry Frei depicting Glenn's life and focusing on his love affair with Leni Riefsenstahl.<br />
<br />
<br />
To read the previous chapter about the silent era Tarzans, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-1-1918-1929.html" target="_blank">click here</a>. The next chapter in the Tarzan story, looking to the 1950s, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">is here</a>.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-39960308747998785672015-10-13T14:57:00.003+01:002015-12-16T12:48:45.032+00:00Tarzan - Part 1 (1918-1929)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Character's first film appearance:</b> Tarzan of the Apes (released January 27th, 1918)<br />
<div>
<b>Character description:</b> Tarzan - aka John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke - is a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his novel Tarzan of the Apes in 1912. He was a feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani great apes after being separated from his parents when their ship was marooned off the African coast by mutineers. As an adult he experiences modern civilisation for the first time, largely rejecting it and choosing to remain in the wild as a heroic adventurer.</div>
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<div>
This is the first in a multi-part entry charting what happened to the various actors who have played Tarzan over the years, beginning with the character's very first film appearance just six years after his invention by Burroughs, during the silent era...</div>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Elmo Lincoln</span></u></b> (born Otto Elmo Linkenhelt)</div>
<div>
<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1918-1921</div>
<div>
<b>Birthdate:</b> Wednesday, February 6th, 1889</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Rochester, Indiana, USA</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Died:</b> Friday, June 27th, 1952</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA</div>
<div>
<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Elmo was the first actor ever to play the Lord of the Jungle (as an adult, at least - Gordon Griffith (1907-1958) played him as a boy, appearing on screen before Elmo, as did at least two uncredited babies). Elmo's earliest known film appearance was as an uncredited member of the audience in DW Griffith's short The Reformers (aka The Lost Art of Minding One's Business) in 1913, after which he had a great number of small roles in various productions, including Griffith's epics Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916).</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elmo in his third and final outing<br />
as Tarzan in 1921, aged 32</td></tr>
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He played the Genie of the Lamp in the Franklin Brothers' Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp in 1917, after which he secured the title role in Tarzan of the Apes, directed by Scott Sidney and released in January 1918. This film (the first to ever make $1m at the box office) was a faithful adaptation of the first half of Burroughs' novel, while the sequel - The Romance of Tarzan - adapted the second half. It used the swamps of Louisiana to stand in for the African jungle. Elmo was 29 in this film, but noticeably stockier than the now more familiar muscular image of Tarzan. The film actually began shooting with a completely different actor as Tarzan, Stellan Windrow, but after five weeks, World War One broke out and Naval Reserve officer Windrow had to quit when he was called up. Footage of him swinging from vines survives in the finished film.</div>
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<div>
Elmo played Tarzan three times in total, including the now lost The Romance of Tarzan (1918) and the 15-part serial The Adventures of Tarzan (1921), and continued to appear in various films throughout the 1920s until the sound era arrived. His last regular role of this time was the now lost 1927 serial King of the Jungle. It starred Elmo's friend Gordon Standing, who died after being horrifically mauled by a lion on set in May 1927. Elmo believed the death could have been prevented, and this sparked his retirement from acting for the next 12 years.</div>
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In these "lost" years, Elmo tried his hand at the salvage business in Salt Lake City, but was lured back to Hollywood in 1939, although he never achieved star status, often appearing in minor roles or uncredited. However, he did have two more brushes with Tarzan, albeit not as the Lord of the Jungle himself. He played an uncredited circus roustabout in 1942's Tarzan's New York Adventure, and an uncredited fisherman in 1949's Tarzan's Magic Fountain. He also appeared in the Seal Brothers' Circus as The Original Tarzan in Person in 1949, with a rather larger 63-inch chest (his chest was 52-inches when he was playing Tarzan in the silent era).</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elmo as a young man (left) and toward<br />
the end of his life</td></tr>
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Elmo's acting career ended on a very damp squib with an unspecified minor role in the 1952 film Carrie, starring Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones (although Elmo was reportedly very proud to be in the film as he was an admirer of Olivier's). He did have a cameo as himself in 1951's Hollywood Story (earning $15 a day), but being the first Tarzan would prove to be Elmo's lasting legacy.</div>
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Elmo died of a heart attack, apparently in the middle of a coughing fit, on June 27th, 1952, aged 63, at home in his apartment at 734 North Van Ness Avenue, very close to Paramount Studios, where he achieved his Tarzan fame. He was interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7042 Hollywood Boulevard. Elmo's daughter Marci'a Lincoln Rudolph wrote an autobiography of her father in 2001 entitled <a href="http://www.erbzine.com/mag2/0283.html" target="_blank">My Father, Elmo Lincoln: The Original Tarzan</a>.<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Gene Pollar</span></u></b> (born Joseph Charles Pohler)</div>
<div>
<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1920</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Friday, September 16th, 1892</div>
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<b>Location:</b> New York, USA</div>
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<b>Died:</b> Wednesday, October 20th, 1971</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA</div>
<div>
<b>Cause of death:</b> Unknown</div>
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After the success of Tarzan of the Apes, the sequel - The Romance of Tarzan - didn't do as well (perhaps due to the principally Wild West setting), so when the studio invited Elmo Lincoln back for the third film, he declined, and a new Viscount Greystoke had to be found.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gene Pollar in publicity pictures from<br />
the now lost The Revenge of Tarzan</td></tr>
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The second Tarzan was played by 28-year-old New York City firefighter Gene Polar, who was 6ft 2in high and 215lbs (15.4st), in The Revenge of Tarzan, released in May 1920. Gene was paid $100 a week, and lived at the studio during filming, feeding the apes each day to build up a working relationship with them. The film was a success, but studio Numa refused to release Gene from his contract with them when Universal Pictures offered him a new two-year deal at £250 a week. He promptly quit acting and went back to fighting fires in New York. The Revenge of Tarzan was his only acting role, and is now lost.<br />
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After retiring from the fire service, Gene became a buyer for a retail store chain in 1944, aged 52, which he did until his full retirement, when he moved to West Hollywood in Florida. However, Gene did hit the headlines one more time when, in 1966, NBC got together several former Apeman actors to help publicise their new Tarzan TV series. In this publicity, James Pierce (who played Tarzan in 1927) claimed he was the oldest living Tarzan. Gene was keen to refute this, so he contacted the media to point out that he was actually eight years older than Pierce. "He's just a kid compared to me", he joked. The mix-up was down to an erroneous report of Gene's death in a New York newspaper several years earlier. Sadly, Gene did not make the reunion, and by the time of the next Tarzan reunion in 1975, he'd passed away.<br />
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Gene died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on October 20th, 1971, aged 79.<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">P Dempsey Tabler</span></u></b> (born Percy Dempsey Tabler)<br />
<div>
<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1920</div>
<div>
<b>Birthdate:</b> Thursday, November 23rd, 1876</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Tennessee, USA</div>
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<b>Died:</b> Thursday, June 7th, 1956</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> San Francisco, USA</div>
<div>
<b>Cause of death:</b> Unknown<br />
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At the age of 44, Percy was older than your average Tarzan, but there was good reason - the 15-part serial The Son of Tarzan, released in May 1920, was based upon Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel of the same name, which told the story of Tarzan and Jane's son Jack and his coming of age. Tarzan and Jane are, at this point, living as a married couple in London, and their pre-teen son dreams of adventures in the jungle like his father. Jack is abducted and whisked away to Africa by Tarzan's old enemy Ivan Paulovich, and his parents set about rescuing him.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Percy as Tarzan, aged 44</td></tr>
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Percy was actually a light opera singer and sometime athlete, and also liked to dabble in acting, but it wasn't his strong point. He'd appeared in a handful of shorts since 1915 as P D Tabler, and after The Son of Tarzan he only made four more films - The Cheater, Smiling All the Way and The Gamesters in 1920, and the short Spawn of the Desert in 1923.<br />
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Percy was balding and so wore a very unconvincing wig to play Tarzan, and he also broke several ribs during the filming of a fight scene with Eugene Burr, who was playing the villain. There were rumours for years that actor Kamuela C Searle (who played Jack Clayton) was actually killed following an incident with a live elephant on set, and filming was completed with a stand-in. But although Searle was injured and the stand-in employed, the actor's brother said he survived the injuries, only to die from cancer in 1924, aged 33.<br />
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Percy was also an astute businessman and was a founding member of Paramount Studios, while he also enjoyed great success in the advertising industry in San Francisco, where he died in retirement, aged 79.<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">James Pierce</span></u></b> (born James Hubert Pierce)<br />
<div>
<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1927</div>
<div>
<b>Birthdate:</b> Wednesday, August 8th, 1900</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Freedom, Indiana, USA</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Died:</b> Sunday, December 11th, 1983</div>
<div>
<b>Location:</b> Apple Valley, California, USA</div>
<div>
<b>Cause of death:</b> Unknown</div>
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It's amazing what professions the various silent era Tarzans actually had other than acting - Elmo Lincoln went into salvage, Gene Pollar was a firefighter, and Percy Tabler was an opera singer. Tarzan number 4 was Big Jim Pierce, who made a name for himself as All-American center of the Indiana Hoosiers football team, and was a sports coach in California (one of his students was John Wayne). He'd also dabbled in acting, debuting in the 1924 adventure serial Leatherstocking.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jim and Joan in a publicity picture for<br />
the RKO radio serials of the 1930s</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The 27-year-old Jim was specifically invited by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs to play the Apeman in the 1927 feature film Tarzan and the Golden Lion. The following year, Jim married Burroughs' daughter Joan, which had the unexpected effect of making Tarzan's creator his father-in-law! Between 1932 and 1936, Jim and Joan played Tarzan and Jane in three RKO radio adaptations of the Tarzan tales, numbering 155 episodes in total.<br />
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Although he only played Tarzan once on film, Jim's acting career continued, turning in (often uncredited) minor performances in the biopic Jesse James (1927), sci-fi serial Flash Gordon (1936, as King Thun), Laurel and Hardy's Our Relations (1936) and Hitchcock's Mr and Mrs Smith (1941). His career came to an end in 1951 playing Bad Bill Smith in the romantic B-Western Cattle Queen.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tarzan reunion, 1966: Jock Mahoney,<br />
then 47, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/johnny-weissmuller.html" target="_blank">Johnny Weissmuller</a>, 62, Ron Ely,<br />
28, and Jim Pierce, 66</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After that he went into real estate in the San Fernando Valley. For many years it was Jim's sole ambition to recover a lost print of Tarzan and the Golden Lion, but he never managed this in his lifetime. Ironically, a print was finally found in France in the 1990s, after Jim's death.<br />
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In 1966, NBC united several former Apeman actors to help publicise their new Tarzan TV series. Jim was one of them, and in interviews he claimed to be the oldest living Tarzan. His predecessor Gene Pollar - who was still alive and well and eight years older than Jim - was keen to refute this, and contacted the media to set the record straight. "Jim's just a kid compared to me", Gene joked.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joan and Jim in 1971, the<br />
year before Joan died</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Joan was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970 and had a mastectomy, and while she was recovering, Jim suffered a major heart attack. By this point he was 70 years old and 258lbs (18.4st), but vowed to lose weight, and got down to 218lbs (15.6st) through exercise and dieting. Their health seemingly on the mend, the couple planned a round-the-world trip together, but tragedy struck on December 30th, 1972 when Joan suffered a heart attack of her own. She died the following day, New Year's Eve. Her last words to Jim were: "I'll see you in the morning, sweetheart."<br />
<br />
Jim was so distraught that his doctor advised him not to attend the funeral, but with the aid of sleeping pills and tranquillizers, he was able to go. For the rest of his years Jim mourned the loss of Joan, but still turned out for public events, including a reunion of four Tarzans at the North American Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles in August 1975 to mark Edgar Rice Burroughs' 100th birthday.<br />
<br />
When he died in 1983, aged 83, he was cremated and his ashes buried next to Joan in Forest Hill Cemetery, Shelbyville, Indiana, their tombstones reading 'Tarzan' and 'Jane'.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tarzan reunion, 1975: Jock Mahoney, then 56,<br />
<a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/johnny-weissmuller.html" target="_blank">Johnny Weissmuller</a>, 71, Buster Crabbe, 67, and Jim Pierce, 75</td></tr>
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<b><u><span style="color: yellow;">Frank Merrill</span></u></b> (born Otto Pohl)<br />
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<b>Played Tarzan:</b> 1928-29</div>
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<b>Birthdate:</b> Tuesday, March 21st, 1893</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Newark, New Jersey, USA</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Died:</b> Saturday, February 12th, 1966</div>
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<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA</div>
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<b>Cause of death:</b> Unknown<br />
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The final Tarzan of the silent era was also the first Tarzan of the sound era. As is traditional with Apeman actors of this period, Frank was busy doing something completely different to acting when he was chosen to play the Lord of the Jungle. As well as being the US National Gymnastics Champion 1916-18, with more than 100 trophies to his name in everything from Roman rings and rope-climbing, from swimming to shot putting, he was also a mounted policeman and stuntman. Indeed, his earliest brush with Tarzan was standing in for Elmo Lincoln on Tarzan of the Apes (1918) and The Adventures of Tarzan (1921), as well as being credited as an Arab guard in the latter.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frank had an impressive<br />
physique, which put him third<br />
in a World's Most Perfectly<br />
Developed Man contest!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But it's ironic to note that Frank was actually named by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs as the man to play Tarzan around 1921, when he was acting as boxing trainer to Charles Ray and wrestling with Buck Jones.<br />
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Between 1921-28 Frank had roles in a number of films, from 1924's A Fighting Heart to 1925's Savages of the Sea, from 1926's Hollywood Reporter to 1928's The Little Wild Girl.<br />
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Frank was cast as Tarzan for the now-lost 15-part 1928 serial Tarzan the Mighty, but only after actor Joe Bonomo injured his leg and pelvis while filming Perils of the Wild, meaning he had to pull out. Director Jack Nelson remembered Frank from a previous film they'd worked on together, and the 35-year-old got offered the loincloth and started filming the very next day. It was actually Frank who came up with the now traditional vine-swinging technique seen in so many subsequent Tarzan adaptations.<br />
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Around 1928, one of Frank's friends sent a photograph of Frank in to a male physique contest. Frank came third in the World's Most Perfectly Developed Man category and the publicity from this helped boost audiences for Tarzan the Mighty (even though Tarzan is quite thoroughly covered up in this serial!).<br />
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Tarzan the Mighty was such a success that Frank was asked to reprise the role for 1929's 15-part serial Tarzan the Tiger, which although shot as a silent production, became the first sound Tarzan when a version with music and sound effects was released alongside the silent version. This sound version includes the first Tarzan yell, which is known as the "Nee-yah!" yell as it is distinct from the later, more familiar Johnny Weissmuller version.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frank in 1964, at<br />
the age of 70</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The advent and success of sound scuppered many a silent actor's career, and among those was Frank, whose speaking voice was deemed unsuitable for the character. There is also a story that Frank asked for two months off before filming a third serial, Tarzan the Terrible, but Universal only wanted him to have two weeks, so never the twain did meet again. However, Frank dutifully promoted Tarzan the Tiger, donning his Tarzan costume, and it was during this time that he realised just how much of an influence he had on children. After his two-shot jaunt as the Apeman, Frank dedicated his life to child welfare, becoming a recreational director for the Parks Commission of the Los Angeles City Administration.<br />
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Upon retirement in 1963, aged 70, following a serious operation, Frank donated his services to the YMCA as a gym instructor. He died in February 1966, aged 71, and was buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery mausoleum.<br />
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<br />
The next chapter in the Tarzan story, going into the 1930s, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tarzan-part-2-1932-1948.html" target="_blank">can be read here</a>, and the <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/tarzan-part-3-1949-1960.html" target="_blank">1949-60 era here</a>.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-66292246153894132772015-10-06T15:56:00.003+01:002015-10-28T12:37:32.174+00:00Dorothy Lamour (1914-1996)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Thursday, December 10th, 1914<br />
<b>Location:</b> New Orleans, USA<br />
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<b>Died:</b> Sunday, September 22nd, 1996<br />
<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack (unsubstantiated)<br />
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<b>Best known for:</b> Actress and singer who hit gold alongside Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the Road to... series of films in the 1940s. She was also crowned Miss Orleans in 1931!<br />
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The jewel in Dorothy's CV is her involvement in the seven films in the popular Road to... series with Crosby and Hope. After 1940's Road to Singapore, the trio went on to visit Zanzibar, Morocco, Utopia and Rio, with the final regular outing being to Bali in 1952. A seventh film was made in 1962 called Road to Hong Kong, but the main female star of this outing was Brit Joan Collins, with Dorothy only turning in a cameo at the end, singing Warmer Than a Whisper in a nightclub.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dorothy with Bing Crosby and<br />
Bob Hope in 1962's Road to<br />
Hong Kong. Bing thought Dorothy<br />
was too old at 48 to be a leading <br />
lady, so cast 29-year-old Joan<br />
Collins instead</td></tr>
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This final, rather half-hearted appearance in Road to Hong Kong was a little controversial, as Dorothy wrote in her memoirs that Crosby thought she was too old at 48 to be a leading lady. Gallantly, Hope refused to do the film at all without Dorothy in it, so the cameo was added to the end (Crosby still got his way by not allowing her to be used in publicity, however). It's worth pointing out that in 1962, both Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were 59. Critics of the time did not receive the film well, and pointed out that it seemed unfair of the leading men to ditch Dorothy when their own on-screen magic had waned somewhat. Incidentally, entertainment supremo Lew Grade wanted to revive the series for an eighth outing in 1977, The Road to the Fountain of Youth - with all three original stars back together - but Crosby died before serious work could begin on it.<br />
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With Road to Bali putting a temporary hiatus on the series in 1952, Dorothy's film career suffered as a result. She took to the stage and to television, making appearances in the 1953 sketch series All Star Revue and The Red Skelton Hour (1955), as well as one-off TV dramas such as The Mink Doll (July 1955). She even opened a Dorothy Lamour beauty salon in Manhattan's Greenwich Village in 1960, the first of what was an aborted chain of outlets.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dorothy, aged 50, in<br />
Pajama Party</td></tr>
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In 1963 she took the role of Miss Lafleur in the Lee Marvin/ John Wayne vehicle Donovan's Reef. By this point Dorothy was 49, but her co-star in this film didn't seem as troubled by her age as Bing Crosby had been - Wayne was 56, and director John Ford was 69. However, this resurgence in big screen visibility did not revive Dorothy's career in this respect, and aside from a cameo in the ridiculous 1964 comedy musical Pajama Party (in which a Martian teenager sent to Earth to prepare the way for invasion instead falls in love with unlucky-in-love Annette Funicello), it was back to TV.<br />
<br />
Those TV roles included two turns in Burke's Law in 1964, I Spy in 1967, The Name of the Game in 1969 and Love American Style in 1970. As the 1970s wore on, Dorothy became a popular guest on the dinner theatre circuit and in stage productions, but her screen work had a lot to be desired. She joined a wealth of what must have been desperate, or at best woefully misguided, fading stars such as Jay Silverheels, Pat O'Brien, <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/johnny-weissmuller.html" target="_blank">Johnny Weissmuller</a>, Rudy Vallee, Maureen O'Sullivan, Ruby Keeler and Busby Berkeley to give a cameo in the appalling 1970 film The Phynx. This movie was so bad that Warner Bros were reluctant to release it. The premise has amusement value, though - it concerns a rock band called The Phynx getting embroiled with Communist kidnappers while on tour in Albania, where they help rescue various showbiz names who have been abducted by the bad guys. It's the only film which stars both Tarzan and Oddjob from the Bond films.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dorothy attending a gala tribute<br />
to Henry Fonda in February 1985,<br />
aged 70</td></tr>
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In the 1980s, Dorothy's TV roles were just as inauspicious. It seems every former glamour girl of Hollywood's heyday had a guest turn in The Love Boat, and Dorothy played Lil Braddock in a 1980 episode. She also turned up in Hart to Hart (1984), Remington Steele (1984), Crazy Like a Fox (1986) and, perhaps inevitably, Murder, She Wrote (1987).<br />
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Dorothy made her final screen acting appearance as Martha Spruce in the Old Chief Woodenhead section of the comedy horror film Creepshow 2, released in May 1987. She and husband George Kennedy run a store in the middle of the desert which is invaded by a gang of thugs. The Spruces are murdered, but the gang steals a Native Indian wooden statue which goes about avenging their deaths. While a cheap 1980s horror flick is not the most auspicious of swansongs for an actress of Dorothy's renown, she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Saturn Award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films in August 1988. However, she lost out to Anne Ramsey, who won posthumously for Throw Momma from the Train.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Held hostage by Holm McCallany in<br />
Creepshow 2, Dorothy's acting swansong</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After Creepshow 2, Dorothy retired from acting, aged 73, but did go on to appear on television, most often to take part in tributes or documentaries about her old friend Bob Hope. She appeared at the 1989 Oscars, presented an award at the 1990 Golden Globes and in May 1993 appeared on Vicki Lawrence's talk show. Her final screen appearance was taking part in the documentary Bob Hope: Memories of World War II, broadcast on August 5, 1995, when she was aged 80.<br />
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On October 22nd, 1995, the musical revue Swinging on a Star, featuring the music of Johnny Burke, opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theater, with Dorothy Lamour credited as a special advisor. The production was nominated for a Best Musical Tony Award, and the actress playing Dorothy in the show - Kathy Fitzgerald - was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.<br />
<br />
Dorothy Lamour died at the age of 81 at her home in North Hollywood on September 22nd, 1996, of undisclosed circumstances, although some websites claim she suffered a heart attack. She was interred at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dorothy Lamour, aged 78, at an awards<br />
night in Beverly Hills in December 1992</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><br /></b>
<b>A bit of fun</b>... Although the 1964 film Pajama Party was not exactly the sort of standard we were used to seeing Dorothy achieve, it did see her perform the rip-roaring number Where Did I Go Wrong ("in my day we never did it this way..."). Although she looks a little uncomfortable with the routine, she throws herself into it and she's still got the verve and spirit of the 1940s. If you look at her here, it's hard to understand Bing Crosby's opinion that she was too old to be a leading lady...<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-42528136614863747592015-09-30T16:17:00.001+01:002015-10-06T13:43:29.843+01:00Errol Flynn (1909-1959)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Sunday, June 20th, 1909<br />
<b>Location:</b> Hobart, Tasmania<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> Wednesday, October 14th, 1959<br />
<b>Location:</b> Vancouver, Canada<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack<br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> The ultimate swashbuckling Hollywood hero who portrayed big screen idols with natural flair, but whose silver screen persona became off-screen reality, leading to a sorry decline. He hit the big time in the title role of Captain Blood (1935) and starred in smash after smash in films such as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Sea Hawk (1940) and They Died with Their Boots On (1941).<br />
<br />
Errol wasn't even a decade into his Hollywood matinee idol stardom when the outbreak of World War Two - or rather, the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 which forced the United States to get involved with the European conflict - signalled the beginning of the end. In August 1942, aged just 33, Errol failed to pass the requisite medical tests to allow him to enlist in the US Army - the results of his physical exam showed he had multiple cardiac problems, recurrent malaria (contracted in Papua New Guinea in the 1920s), chronic back pain (which he soothed by taking morphine and heroin), chronic tuberculosis (not helped by his smoking) and various venereal diseases (Errol was a notorious bed-hopper).<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Warner Brothers struggled to match the physical prowess of Errol's public image with the sickly reality, and when his failure to pass the enlistment tests got out, his credibility as an action hero began to wane. He spent the war years desperately trying to convince cinema-goers that he was still the same man who swung from ropes and buckled swashes in his 1930s heyday, but films such as Dive Bomber (1941), Northern Pursuit (1943) and the controversial Objective, Burma! (1945) failed to do the job, and his box office power faltered.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Yv9PEcXLdOhXQ89PVFsLg4N0Py7HDVVeqOhBxTrbAxmR0JSQacJfruN1Tqcxcp1YDoe37lmZDoqH2kPPwXgrxNw3Zxj_2juY4qwhbnwCVZY4AZhOHxdfbYRn-ak59iA-IblrE2fAvu0/s1600/200px-ShowdownNovel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Yv9PEcXLdOhXQ89PVFsLg4N0Py7HDVVeqOhBxTrbAxmR0JSQacJfruN1Tqcxcp1YDoe37lmZDoqH2kPPwXgrxNw3Zxj_2juY4qwhbnwCVZY4AZhOHxdfbYRn-ak59iA-IblrE2fAvu0/s200/200px-ShowdownNovel.jpg" width="130" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The 1961 UK paperback<br />
sleeve for Errol's 1946<br />
novel Showdown</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After the war, Errol started to branch out into different areas to bolster his income and fame. In 1946 he published a romantic adventure novel called Showdown, first in Australia, then in the UK, which drew upon his own experiences in New Guinea as a teenager. There were reports at the time of a second novel in the works, Cuautenos, about Montezuma's nephew fighting Conquistadores, but this never got finished.<br />
<br />
Throughout the 1950s Errol struggled to get back the hard-hitting, action-packed, leading man roles he was used to before the war, and continued to struggle with his health. In 1952 he was seriously ill with hepatitis resulting from liver damage, caused by his addiction to alcohol and drugs.<br />
<br />
In 1956 he made the first tentative step onto television screens, a little earlier than many of his Hollywood contemporaries. He played French adventurer Francois Villon in a Screen Directors' Playhouse presentation of The Sword of Villon, made by silent era legend Hal Roach and broadcast in April 1956. It was not the resurgence he craved, and at the age of 47, he was physically much plumper and older than the role required.<br />
<br />
Between 1956-57 Errol hosted his own half-hour anthology series of adventure yarns under the umbrella title of The Errol Flynn Theatre, appearing in two stories himself, as Don Juan, and as a 17th century English royalist.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqCBXWZzrcmmN6BgekfwmrxKftt8TG76KSpV0DyTRf3o-Ygnw1pJXaHNE4JSIdLgtfoasxGplcWdbsioraMh5mfcV07Sy4sL2ya8MHqeZDr-i3_79DhESHSKl1kgDNeg6TAPMeosoDVXQ/s1600/erroltell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqCBXWZzrcmmN6BgekfwmrxKftt8TG76KSpV0DyTRf3o-Ygnw1pJXaHNE4JSIdLgtfoasxGplcWdbsioraMh5mfcV07Sy4sL2ya8MHqeZDr-i3_79DhESHSKl1kgDNeg6TAPMeosoDVXQ/s200/erroltell.jpg" width="121" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Errol on set as William<br />
Tell in 1954, aged 45</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Toward the end of his life Errol Flynn was a sorry shadow of his former glory. He was noticeably older and fatter, of declining health due to his drinking, drug-taking and general carousing, and the millions he'd made as a screen idol in the 1930s were rapidly evaporating, particularly in 1954 when he decided to co-finance his own film, The Story of William Tell. This $860,000 film was never completed because the Italian backers pulled out. Errol had to foot the bill as creditors seized sets and camera equipment, as well as the actor's own possessions, such as his car and furniture. He insisted for some time afterwards that the venture could be re-staged, and as late as 1956 said he had $340,000 of his own money invested in the film, but it never got finished. Around 60 seconds of footage from the existing rushes appeared in a TCM documentary on Errol, but since then it is believed the footage has been lost, and the Flynn estate remains tight-lipped on the subject. Interestingly, the $10,000 ski resort set built for the film still stands today, and was converted into a real ski resort at <a href="http://www.courmayeur.com/" target="_blank">Courmayeur</a> in the Valley d'Aosta, near Mont Blanc, Italy.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEkGNb61zf-000Sr6g1ePyn-oTQ5XbuvFbCc_SltavmEBeTNEre7SAclaudviBEtLw9spO-bdy0bmwET1qKNICDPYKn3JtVErALdK17hMKZrWZx5QM9-N9rH4VRoFuhywtCfqakJgwwEg/s1600/errolfidel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEkGNb61zf-000Sr6g1ePyn-oTQ5XbuvFbCc_SltavmEBeTNEre7SAclaudviBEtLw9spO-bdy0bmwET1qKNICDPYKn3JtVErALdK17hMKZrWZx5QM9-N9rH4VRoFuhywtCfqakJgwwEg/s200/errolfidel.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Errol pictured with Fidel Castro<br />
(seated) in Cuba in 1958</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In late 1958 Errol flew to Cuba to film the self-produced B-movie Cuban Rebel Girls (aka Assault of the Rebel Girls). This was a strange film in that it featured Errol as himself (an "American correspondent" working for the Hearst Press) helping Fidel Castro overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and indeed the actor met with Castro during his visit to the country, and became a supporter of the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote numerous newspaper articles about his experiences in Cuba, thought lost until they were unearthed in Texas in 2009.<br />
<br />
Cuban Rebel Girls was released posthumously on Christmas Day, 1959, as his last acting role, but his connection to Cuba did not end there. In November 1960, a 50-minute documentary was released in East Germany entitled Cuban Story (aka The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution) which Errol had provided on-screen introduction and summary for. However, his performance is rambling, perhaps due to his alcoholism and a lack of script. Cuban Story was forgotten about for decades until it received its North American premiere in New York in 2001. You can watch a scratchy copy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnEFg30lP5c" target="_blank">here</a>, but it is Errol's unfocused appearances at the beginning and end which hold the most interest.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBet_oU3YcpcK-HkYWoOzRrOs-w5l7Rhug_0onqXD9oMiq8abt8jkl96yH_vteoVPuGSoOq_H837ioyay2cai6agA7DjGEMzMPqVrG46pEtrMT31QonTjyvS2KSiiPcRuUBdMfW33-B2M/s1600/errol1959.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBet_oU3YcpcK-HkYWoOzRrOs-w5l7Rhug_0onqXD9oMiq8abt8jkl96yH_vteoVPuGSoOq_H837ioyay2cai6agA7DjGEMzMPqVrG46pEtrMT31QonTjyvS2KSiiPcRuUBdMfW33-B2M/s200/errol1959.jpg" width="163" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 50-year-old Errol arriving at<br />
Vancouver Airport, just five<br />
days before he died</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It was after completing his work on the Cuban films that Errol flew to Vancouver, on Friday, October 9th, 1959, to try and ease his financial woes by selling his beloved sailing yacht Zaca to businessman George Caldough. Five days later, Caldough was driving Errol and his girlfriend Beverly Aadland to catch a Los Angeles-bound flight when the actor complained of severe pains in his legs and back. Caldough drove to his doctor Grant Gould's house, who assumed the actor was suffering from degenerative disc disease and spinal osteoarthritis and administered 50mg of Demerol intravenously. Errol's pain eased and Dr Gould advised him to rest before resuming the journey to the airport. Gould, Caldough and Aadland left Errol alone for 20 minutes, but when his girlfriend returned to check on him, the actor was unresponsive. He was rushed to Vancouver General Hospital but was pronounced dead that evening, having never regained consciousness. The coroner ruled that he had died of a heart attack, together with cirrhosis of the liver and diverticulosis, at the age of 50. He was survived by both his parents, all three of his former wives and all four of his children. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.<br />
<br />
A rather unpleasant, but still diverting, aside to Errol's death was the findings of the coroner's examination. In his memoirs published in 1985, Vancouver coroner Glen McDonald recalls that chief pathologist Tom Harmon discovered several rather large genital warts on Errol's penis.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7kqmOtJQrcfNU4okbVTHlhuH90g_q-rw4IJ2j3rYPM3DaF-9SCJXPPPAv7TgJUjK-yCFsUedl0VVGJRk9O9PLKNaCtXo2ECamuAMvrCUFNLv5RJAZ9ZfffPNsFKAtgYm1ufAkHJfrH3I/s1600/flynn-autopsy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7kqmOtJQrcfNU4okbVTHlhuH90g_q-rw4IJ2j3rYPM3DaF-9SCJXPPPAv7TgJUjK-yCFsUedl0VVGJRk9O9PLKNaCtXo2ECamuAMvrCUFNLv5RJAZ9ZfffPNsFKAtgYm1ufAkHJfrH3I/s200/flynn-autopsy.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Errol Flynn on the autopsy slab</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
"Tom Haddon seemed fascinated [and said] 'Look, I'm going to be lecturing at the Institute of Pathology and I just thought it might be of interest if I could remove these things and fix them in formaldehyde and use them as a visual aid'. 'No way!' I said, 'we're not going to do that. I don't want anything done that isn't relevant to the case because we're really in the limelight tonight. How can we send Mr Flynn back to his wife with part of his endowment missing?'<br />
<br />
However, McDonald recalled that after he returned to the observation room after a brief absence, the venereal warts have disappeared: "The first thing I noticed was that the VD warts had vanished from the end of Mr Flynn's penis. Then I spotted a jar of formaldehyde on a shelf that looked suspiciously like it might contain VD warts. Tom looked sheepish but we were both laughing at the utter silliness of the whole thing. I never did figure out why the temptation had been too great. So the warts were fished out of the formaldehyde jar and, using tape, Harmon and I stuck them back where they belonged. Everything was back to normal. I was relieved to learn later, talking with the Chief Coroner in Los Angeles, that a further autopsy was performed and the results concurred in every respect with what we had found. The tape was never mentioned."<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZOeOkKMP5q1lpydvExc_tS3O0lnIEM_3dM7XRHVCzr4vEt-oyubV9ikZBxGPGIVn6TqHFpxVS0Y-mnoaeyRnVYXJJqhQMDtdUTp6ypAq38bRoVLAogzHc1VGVPUotgUZ7QybWyAzpWwU/s1600/seanflynn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZOeOkKMP5q1lpydvExc_tS3O0lnIEM_3dM7XRHVCzr4vEt-oyubV9ikZBxGPGIVn6TqHFpxVS0Y-mnoaeyRnVYXJJqhQMDtdUTp6ypAq38bRoVLAogzHc1VGVPUotgUZ7QybWyAzpWwU/s200/seanflynn.jpg" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Errol's son Sean Flynn<br />
went missing in Cambodia<br />
in 1970, aged 28</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Tragedy continued to dog the Flynn dynasty after Errol's death. The actor had four children, but only one son: Sean, born in May 1941 to Errol's first wife, the French-American actress Lili Damita. Sean became an actor in his father's footsteps in the 1960s, including The Son of Captain Blood and Temple of the White Elephant. Bored with acting, Sean Flynn branched out into becoming a safari guide and big game hunter and warden in Kenya, and in 1966 took up photojournalism in South Vietnam, working for Paris Match, Time Life and United Press International. He also covered the Arab-Israeli conflict in Israel, but worked principally in Vietnam and Cambodia.<br />
<br />
In April 1970, a 28-year-old Sean was captured by Viet Cong guerrillas in Cambodia and disappeared. Sean's true fate has never been established, but current thinking is that he was held captive for over a year before being murdered by Khmer Rouge in June 1971. Sean's mother Lili spent a lot of time and money trying to find her lost son, but finally declared him legally dead in 1984. There was a brief flourish of hope that Sean's remains had been found by a British expedition in Kampong Cham province in March 2010, but DNA tests proved negative.<br />
<br />
<b>A bit of fun...</b> Neither Errol or Sean had a happy ending, so here's a fan-made music video tribute to Errol, to the soundtrack of Coldplay's Speed of Sound.<br />
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-31048119086398044652015-09-16T15:36:00.002+01:002015-09-30T14:15:26.276+01:00Cyd Charisse (1922-2008)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsoFNmpt6uGqu4S6DuE4lnFC2GEc48gSKWIM0zI63MsSId1lN73mRtGcp7oUdQR_5EBD28daf-_1hLh8poOZWVxIl3tp9xbrGoV1edQ42NSMVSbC0gYt1A9DLIn7HnMDN1pbEAmwDTbw/s1600/cc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsoFNmpt6uGqu4S6DuE4lnFC2GEc48gSKWIM0zI63MsSId1lN73mRtGcp7oUdQR_5EBD28daf-_1hLh8poOZWVxIl3tp9xbrGoV1edQ42NSMVSbC0gYt1A9DLIn7HnMDN1pbEAmwDTbw/s200/cc.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> Tula Ellice Finklea<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Wednesday, March 8th, 1922<br />
<b>Location:</b> Amarillo, Texas, USA<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> Tuesday, June 17th, 2008<br />
<b>Location:</b> Los Angeles, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Heart attack<br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> American actress and dancer known for her endless legs and elegant style opposite the likes of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in a number of musicals in the 1940s and 50s, including Singin' in the Rain (1952) and The Band Wagon (1953). She was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1958 for the previous year's Silk Stockings, losing out to Kay Kendall and Taina Elg for Les Girls.<br />
<br />
Cyd cottoned on quickly to the decline of the blockbuster MGM musicals in the late 1950s, and retired from dancing after playing showgirl Vicky Gaye in 1958's Party Girl opposite Robert Taylor. Instead she concentrated on straightforward acting, in romantic comedies and the occasional serious role too - Black Tights (1961), The Silencers (1966), Maroc 7 (1967) and Warlords of the Deep (1978).<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>By the 1970s Cyd had begun to fall into the usual routine that became many Hollywood legends of the era - guest star parts in TV shows such as Hawaii Five-O (1978), The Love Boat (1979), Fantasy Island (1978 and 1983), The Fall Guy (1984), Murder, She Wrote (1985) and Crazy Like a Fox (1986).<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFIdk5XBZFbcjzDNTkNZn52gDwEO9jEEwFJY99OlgceTouRrjeoqVC2hLL4uB2foiz1jnaw1NwBnxms3_wXHZmzGilroroF17Qiz02j916r4EHHE3LZkWAhJZmoKTp9u336z5h72VdX_s/s1600/cc1987.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFIdk5XBZFbcjzDNTkNZn52gDwEO9jEEwFJY99OlgceTouRrjeoqVC2hLL4uB2foiz1jnaw1NwBnxms3_wXHZmzGilroroF17Qiz02j916r4EHHE3LZkWAhJZmoKTp9u336z5h72VdX_s/s320/cc1987.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyd as she appeared in Janet Jackson's Alright video in 1990<br />
(left) and Blue Mercedes's I Want to Be Your Property (1987)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Cyd even made appearances in a couple of music videos around this time - firstly, the North American version of Blue Mercedes's I Want to Be Your Property (1987), in which she rolls back the decades and kicks up her heels just like she used to. Cyd was 65 in this video, but you'd never guess it. There's even a line in the song saying: "I want to live like Cyd Charisse, in a great big house by the sea"!<br />
<br />
Then, three years later, a 68-year-old Cyd is showing Janet Jackson some moves in her video for the single Alright. Again, Cyd can still do it, and the awed look on Janet's face says it all.<br />
<br />
And as if schmoozing with the Jacksons wasn't enough, in 1990 Cyd also produced her own keep fit video, Easy Energy Shape Up, aimed at active senior citizens, and two years later finally made her Broadway debut in the musical Grand Hotel as ageing ballerina Elizaveta Grushinskaya, replacing Liliane Montevecchi.<br />
<br />
By the 1990s, as Cyd reached her 70th year, she entered semi-retirement, with only three more screen roles remaining. On April 28th, 1995, Cyd played Amanda Richardson in an episode of detective series Burke's Law called Who Killed the Highest Bidder?, while in November of that year she was the celebrity caller to Frasier Crane's radio show in the episode The Adventures of Bad Boy and Dirty Girl.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKUnrdlBpNauw_4NVgFKm6ggODrcFkkkIo64NbJ5Sd9DAPl3uJtHOGmsO3X4tEotxQCyi-GuOB_M1IA0-ZkNkRQXw-XvELakCfMXQ5PD-wSEG-C71R6pCMB-e5o6fteAXpNHSbGkLix60/s1600/080617_cyd_charisse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKUnrdlBpNauw_4NVgFKm6ggODrcFkkkIo64NbJ5Sd9DAPl3uJtHOGmsO3X4tEotxQCyi-GuOB_M1IA0-ZkNkRQXw-XvELakCfMXQ5PD-wSEG-C71R6pCMB-e5o6fteAXpNHSbGkLix60/s200/080617_cyd_charisse.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyd in 2008, the year she died, with her<br />
second husband Tony Martin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It would be 13 years before Cyd would act again, and for the final time. She played Vicky Adams in the $1m TV movie Empire State Building Murders, which was a loving tribute to American film noir and the icons of its heyday. Of course, most of those icons were long gone by 2008, but Cyd was still hanging on, aged 86, and appeared alongside Kirk Douglas, Mickey Rooney, Ben Gazzara, Anne Jeffreys and Richard Erdman.<br />
<br />
Empire State Building Murders was broadcast on August 14th, four weeks after Cyd actually passed away. On Monday, June 16th, 2008, Cyd was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in LA after suffering a heart attack. She died the following day, aged 86. As a practicing Methodist (she was an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church), she was buried at Hillside Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Culver City, California.<br />
<br />
Here's the classic routine between Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in the Broadway Melody section of the 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain. Those legs...!<br />
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-36236297592933061552015-09-15T11:00:00.000+01:002018-07-28T13:18:06.252+01:00Rock Hudson (1925-1985)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9a1LWn-4Z97wKMrNGUwqiJzGiBvOWpTsKsAIGE_ACRJwtx2f6Sd2XLbqljG_g1Mzy6I_iSItE3hYl1_gNjuTe_dE99IjiVYxkcFsZLl5ajcVcbFDLlgtcmpWQltG05JsAonsK0qpq3no/s1600/rock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9a1LWn-4Z97wKMrNGUwqiJzGiBvOWpTsKsAIGE_ACRJwtx2f6Sd2XLbqljG_g1Mzy6I_iSItE3hYl1_gNjuTe_dE99IjiVYxkcFsZLl5ajcVcbFDLlgtcmpWQltG05JsAonsK0qpq3no/s200/rock.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>
<b>Birth name:</b> Roy Harold Scherer Jr<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Tuesday, November 17th, 1925<br />
<b>Location:</b> Illinois, USA<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> Wednesday, October 2nd, 1985<br />
<b>Location:</b> Beverly Hills, California, USA<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> AIDS<br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> All-American leading man whose most successful period was the 1950s and 60s in romantic comedies with Doris Day. His legacy is perhaps a little overshadowed by his high profile death from AIDS at a time when the disease was little understood, but his bravery in being open about his diagnosis helped pave the way for more reasoned discussion of how to tackle the disease. Rock was nominated for an Oscar in 1957 for his part in the previous year's Giant (Yul Brynner won for The King and I). However, he did win four Henrietta Awards at the Golden Globes for Male World Film Favourite between 1959-63 (with a fifth nomination in 1966, losing to Paul Newman), and was voted America's biggest box office star in both 1957 and 1959.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>In the 1970s Rock made a very successful transition into television, perhaps one of the most effective of all the attempts by legends of classic Hollywood to extend their careers this way. He'd secured the title role in the detective series McMillan & Wife between 1971-77, starred in the Hugo Award nominated mini-series The Martian Chronicles (1980) and found a second star vehicle in the series The Devlin Connection (1982).<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOEgufO-eRhV8y7daIj3spz0nK2GlDD0SLhyp1xid_qgPOxB4Ru6KIjqQnGMmy3n94Gtmpy-bABIYbdNa2cb6NEqpOdRWw6ocnTR0iAp3QeADbA5UpMtCMAG15TAQEDjdMenlwgRQzbRc/s1600/rhdev.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOEgufO-eRhV8y7daIj3spz0nK2GlDD0SLhyp1xid_qgPOxB4Ru6KIjqQnGMmy3n94Gtmpy-bABIYbdNa2cb6NEqpOdRWw6ocnTR0iAp3QeADbA5UpMtCMAG15TAQEDjdMenlwgRQzbRc/s200/rhdev.jpg" width="178" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rock in The Devlin Connection,<br />
soon after having a quintuple heart<br />
bypass in 1981, aged 56</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Rock's health was a constant issue to him in the 1980s. After years of smoking and drinking he suffered a heart attack in November 1981, aged just 56, and filming on The Devlin Connection had to be postponed for a year while he recovered from a quintuple heart bypass. But Rock was his own worst enemy. He recovered from the surgery but continued to smoke. He was well enough to return to acting in the winter of 1983, and flew to Israel to film the action drama The Ambassador with Robert Mitchum and Ellen Burstyn. He was unwell during the film's production and reportedly clashed with the heavy-drinking Mitchum several times on set.<br />
<br />
On June 5th, 1984, Rock was diagnosed with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), an illness first recorded in 1981 which started out being called GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), then 4H (after the four main victim groups of homosexuals, heroin users, haemophiliacs and Haitians), before officially settling on HIV in September 1982. Rock kept his diagnosis a secret for just over a year, and continued to work while travelling to various European countries in search of a cure or delaying treatment.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In The Vegas Strip War,<br />
aged 58</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 1984, while filming the TV movie The Vegas Strip War co-starring a young Sharon Stone, Rock's health grew worse, and rumours began circulating that he had liver cancer because of his gaunt face and weight loss. By the time he'd secured his swansong role in late 1984 - that of Daniel Reece on blockbuster soap Dynasty - Rock was having trouble remembering his lines (he used cue cards) and his speech was reportedly becoming slurred <i>(however, see the comment below this entry for an alternative opinion)</i>. Rock made his final appearance in the episode Sammy Jo on April 3rd, 1985, the character being hastily written out of the series, dying off-screen, due to Rock's deteriorating appearance.<br />
<br />
The path to Rock's demise is paved with sexual liaisons with a wealth of homosexual men. The list of rumoured sexual partners seems open-ended, and Rock's homosexuality was almost exposed in 1955 by Confidential magazine, until his agent managed to silence the publication in favour of outing to other, lesser, Hollywood stars on his books. A marriage to Phyllis Gates, Rock's agent's secretary, probably did little to convince those in the know of his true leanings, and indeed the marriage only lasted three years, with Gates citing "mental cruelty" in divorce proceedings uncontested by Rock. The men Rock is said to have had relationships with include author Armistead Maupin (of Tales of the City fame), Jack Coates, Tom Clark, Marc Christian, Lee Garlington and singer Jim Nabors.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rock as he appeared in Doris<br />
Day's Best Friends in July<br />
1985, aged 59</td></tr>
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On Tuesday, July 16th, 1985 Rock joined his old friend Doris Day at a press conference to launch her new TV show Doris Day's Best Friends. Rock looked so ill - gaunt and with incoherent speech - that the footage was all over the national news for days afterwards, and his health became a topic of public concern. On July 18th Rock flew to Paris, France for treatment with the anti-viral drug HPA-23 (then unavailable in the US), but on July 21st, he collapsed in his bedroom at the Ritz Hotel, forcing his publicist to announce that the actor was suffering from inoperable liver cancer. Any suggestion that Rock had AIDS was hotly denied.<br />
<br />
But the denial did not last long. On Thursday, July 25th, it was announced that Rock did indeed have AIDS and that he'd been diagnosed over a year ago. In a press conference held in August 1985, Rock suggested he'd contracted the virus from various blood transfusions he'd had during his heart bypass in November 1981 - the year HIV was first identified.<br />
<br />
Rock flew back to Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 30th, 1985, by private chartered jet carrying just him and his entourage and medical staff (incidentally, having to pay the airline $250,000 for the pleasure due to prejudice surrounding AIDS at the time). Too weak to walk himself, he was taken off the Air France flight by stretcher, and flown by helicopter to the UCLA Medical Centre, where he spent several weeks undergoing further treatment. He was released from hospital in late August 1985, to return home to Beverly Hills.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How the National Enquirer<br />
reported Rock's AIDS diagnosis</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Rock died in his sleep of AIDS-related complications on October 2nd, 1985, six weeks before his 60th birthday. He had requested that no funeral be held, and his body was cremated hours after his death. A memorial was later established at Forest Lawn cemetery in California.<br />
<br />
Rock's diagnosis lifted the lid on AIDS and HIV and made it a talking point across the United States and the world. Within weeks of his death, $1.8m had been made in private contributions to AIDS research and treatment - that was more than double the amount raised in 1984. The US Congress set aside $221m to help develop a cure for AIDS, and shortly before his death, Rock himself had donated $225,000 to the cause. HIV specialist Dr Michael Gottlieb called Rock Hudson the "single most influential [AIDS] patient ever".<br />
<br />
While all of this good came out of Rock's tragic death, there was still controversy, most memorably over a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e3dT5gCuL0" target="_blank">screen kiss</a> he had with Dynasty co-star Linda Evans, screened in February 1985. At the time of filming Rock knew he had AIDS but did not tell Evans, and some believed he should have disclosed this information to her prior to filming. Although AIDS cannot be contracted through saliva, this wasn't an established fact in 1984, and ripples were sent through the acting industry. The Screen Actors' Guild made it a rule that all actors were informed in advance of any open-mouthed kissing in scripts, and there were stories of some scripts being rewritten to eliminate kissing scenes. Linda Evans herself never showed any anger or disappointment with Rock, however.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rock with lover Marc Christian, who<br />
later sued the actor's estate for<br />
"intentional infliction of emotional<br />
distress". He won $5.5m</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But screen kisses were small fry compared to what the grieving Rock Hudson Estate had to face from the actor's former lover Marc Christian, who launched a lawsuit against them on the grounds of "intentional infliction of emotional distress". He claimed Rock had continued to have sexual intercourse with him until February 1985, in the full knowledge he had HIV. Christian repeatedly tested negative for HIV but claimed he was emotionally damaged. He also launched a $10m lawsuit against Rock's personal secretary for apparently lying to him about whether Rock had the virus. In 1989 Marc Christian was awarded $21.75m in damages - later much reduced to $5.5m. He died of heart problems caused by years of heavy smoking in 2009, after which Christian's partner Brent Beckwith took legal action claiming he had not received the expected share of his late lover's estate.<br />
<br />
Here's an interview with Rock with the British chat show host Terry Wogan from September 1984, three months after his HIV diagnosis. Rock's a little prickly at times, though still charming, but there are moments where his memory is obviously failing him (in reference to 1953's Sea Devils), which he covers up with humour. Asked how he manages to remain anonymous when on his travels, he reveals he simply "walks quickly"...!<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582216403819906467.post-82536557481813112812015-09-14T16:42:00.003+01:002015-09-15T09:08:50.645+01:00Joyce Grenfell (1910-1979)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Birth name:</b> Joyce Irene Phipps<br />
<b>Birthdate:</b> Thursday, February 10th, 1910<br />
<b>Location:</b> London, UK<br />
<br />
<b>Died:</b> Friday, November 30th, 1979<br />
<b>Location:</b> London, UK<br />
<b>Cause of death:</b> Eye cancer<br />
<br />
<b>Best known for:</b> Much-loved comedy actress and writer who was something of a pioneer in the UK for performing her own comedy songs and monologues, something Victoria Wood would popularise in the 1980s and 90s. Joyce's best known acting work is for her role as Ruby Gates in the St Trinian's series of British comedy films. She was awarded an OBE in 1946.<br />
<br />
After being such a mainstay of British comedy films in the 1950s and 60s, it's somewhat surprising to learn that Joyce's final acting credit was actually a whole 15 years before she died. In 1964 she played Hortense Astor in The Yellow Rolls-Royce, a Golden Globe-winning film starring Ingrid Bergman and <a href="http://afinalcurtaincall.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Rex%20Harrison" target="_blank">Rex Harrison</a>. Joyce's role was modest, but at the age of just 54, she had so much more to offer which the acting profession ultimately missed out on.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkO454JQY9EhvV9rI5WWRyxLha10ob37s-4IizB2EQGlLZlC2Vr9jEO3V9an71sa4s4IBlbK3nX3bfvP15wWtImktr1SbLDrA5BmioAc2UUnKmRmPCCb-pytCatOmFyLQWH_GI6RDdj44/s1600/ha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkO454JQY9EhvV9rI5WWRyxLha10ob37s-4IizB2EQGlLZlC2Vr9jEO3V9an71sa4s4IBlbK3nX3bfvP15wWtImktr1SbLDrA5BmioAc2UUnKmRmPCCb-pytCatOmFyLQWH_GI6RDdj44/s200/ha.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In The Yellow Rolls-Royce, aged 54</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Four years later, in January 1968, Joyce took up storytelling duties on the children's BBC series Jackanory reading the adventures of Pippi Longstocking, and returned to the storytelling chair 12 months later to narrate five Beatrix Potter tales for the programme. Her final installment was The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse on January 24th, 1969.<br />
<br />
There were only a handful of personal appearances throughout the next decade - an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show in the US in October 1970, a couple of turns on The David Frost Show the same year, as well as a performance at a birthday gala tribute to Noel Coward. Intermittently throughout the 1970s Joyce had appeared as a panellist on the BBC classical music quiz show Face the Music, making her final appearance on Christmas Day 1979 - a month after her death.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 68-year-old Joyce looked<br />
unwell on the cover of her<br />
latest LP in 1978</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So what led to this paucity of screen appearances in the 1970s? Well, Joyce was working, but just not on TV or in film. She toured the UK, America and Australia with her comedy routines and spoof operettas written by Richard Addinsell and William Blezard, which led to her appearances on US chat shows such as Cavett and Frost. She also made original recordings of her monologues, including Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure (1976) and George, Don't Do That (1977).<br />
<br />
However, in 1973 - shortly after a comedy performance at Windsor Castle for Queen Elizabeth II - Joyce was taken ill with an eye infection which resulted in the partial loss of sight in her left eye. The eye began to shrivel but she refused surgery, preferring an uncomfortable glass cosmetic contact.<br />
<br />
In 1979, upon the request of her husband Reggie, Joyce sought treatment for the rheumatic pains she was suffering in her eye. It was discovered that the eye was now cancerous, and that the cancer had spread to her spine. Reggie was told his wife had less than a year to live. Years later, Janie Hampton - who as a child had benefited from Joyce's philanthropy and altruism - said: "She never knew she had cancer. She was not interested in medical diagnosis. She bought new clothes, had a new eye fitted, and accepted invitations to preach in churches the following year."<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ74mt1OJ3NyYBAL8JVfX7F-1LODZAEDDVWKKsReNqToBBSjsEfH9HYF05k7sNrb5t7tLHR4FnZ6Ol4zcjhJ8PUpOWslDzHlZv2I7uN9r912_d2jgepbokjEzhkX3-FuDx6-BZukfVm8c/s1600/Joyce_Grenfell_8_Allan_Warren.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ74mt1OJ3NyYBAL8JVfX7F-1LODZAEDDVWKKsReNqToBBSjsEfH9HYF05k7sNrb5t7tLHR4FnZ6Ol4zcjhJ8PUpOWslDzHlZv2I7uN9r912_d2jgepbokjEzhkX3-FuDx6-BZukfVm8c/s200/Joyce_Grenfell_8_Allan_Warren.jpg" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A portrait of Joyce in<br />
later years, by Allan<br />
Warren</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
However, the operation was not successful, and in October 1979 Joyce became seriously ill. Ten days after celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary to Reggie, she slipped into a coma, passing away on November 30th, aged 69. She was cremated at Golders Green on Tuesday, December 4th and her ashes placed in the Garden of Remembrance. In February 1980 a memorial service was held for Joyce at Westminster Abbey, the first time such an honour had ever been afforded a comedian (only Les Dawson and Ronnie Barker have had that honour since).<br />
<br />
It was revealed that Joyce was due to be awarded a damehood in the 1980 New Year Honours List for her services to entertainment, to be added to the OBE she received 34 years previously for the same reason.<br />
<br />
Before her death Joyce had been interviewed for the Southern Television documentary Chaos Supersedes ENSA, about the Entertainments National Service Association which entertained the troops during World War Two. Joyce's posthumous appearance was broadcast on August 27th, 1980.<br />
<br />
For a reminder of just how clever a writer and performer Joyce was, here's a routine called "Eng Lit" she performed for the BBC...<br />
<br />
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