Tag: movies

Film History: Alan Ladd

Director Frank Tuttle, “Alan Ladd as Philip Raven”, 1942, “This Gun for Hire”, Cinematography John Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Born at Hot Springs, Arkansas in September of 1913, Alan Walbridge Ladd was an American actor and film producer who found success with portrayals in film noir, war movies and Westerns in the 1940s and early 1950s.

The only child born to freelance accountant Alan Ladd and English-born Ina Raleigh, Alan Walbridge Ladd was four years old at his father’s death of a heart attack. He and his mother moved to Oklahoma City where she married house painter Jim Beavers. The family relocated to California and eventually settled in the San Fernando Valley where Beavers was given a position at the silent film studio FBO Pictures (Film Booking Offices of America).

Ladd enrolled at North Hollywood High School where, despite his small stature, he became a swimming and diving champion in his teen years. In his senior year, he also participated in the high-school’s theatrical productions, one of which included his role as the comic Ko-Ko in “The Mikado”. After graduating in February of 1934, Ladd worked in various jobs including gas station attendant, lifeguard and hot dog vendor. His first employment in the film industry was a two-year position as a grip at the Warner Brothers studios. 

After appearing in several stage productions for the Ben Bard Theater in Hollywood, Alan Ladd appeared in an uncredited role in director David Butler’s 1936 musical football-comedy “Pigskin Parade”. Although able to get short-term work at MGM and RKO, he was signed later that year by radio station KFWB as its sole radio actor, a position he held for three years. Ladd’s work as multiple characters was noticed by actress and talent agent Sue Carol who began to promote him for films and radio. Ladd’s first role through Carol was a credited role in director Frank Lloyd’s 1939 historical drama “Rulers of the Sea” with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Margaret Lockwood. 

Over the next few years, Ladd had several small roles in films, among these were the 1940 “Green Hornet” serial,  the 1941 comedy horror “The Black Cat”, and an uncredited role as a newspaper reporter in “Citizen Kane”. He gained some recognition for his featured role as a Royal Air Force pilot in the 1942 RKO Radio Pictures war film “Joan of Paris”, a critical success that featured the U.S. screen debuts of Paul Henried and Michèle Morgan. Ladd was given a contract with Paramount Pictures and, after a successful audition, the role of Raven, a paid killer with a conscience in director Frank Tuttle’s 1942 crime film “This Gun for Hire”. Although he had only received fourth billing, Ladd was made a star due to critical praise and fan reaction.  

Paramount recognized that Alan Ladd was a potential star and immediately signed him for the adaptation of detective-novel writer Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key” released in October of 1942. This was Ladd’s second pairing with Veronica Lake, who had co-starred with him in “This Gun for Hire”. He followed “The Glass Key” with the 1942 all-star musical “Star Spangled Rhythm” and two films released in 1943, “Lucky Jordan” with Helen Walker and “China” with Loretta Young. 

Although classified as unfit for military service due to stomach issues, Ladd enlisted in January of 1943, briefly serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit. He attained the rank of corporal but was given a honorable medical discharge at the end of October due to a stomach disorder complicated by influenza. When Ladd returned to Paramount, he was given the 1944 drama film “And Now Tomorrow”, a melodrama that co-starred Loretta Young. He next acted in the leading role for John Farrow’s historical adventure film “Two Years before the Mast”, which became one of the most popular films in the United States after its belated release in 1946. 

In 1945, Paramount Pictures bought American-British detective fiction writer Raymond Chandler’s first original film screenplay “The Blue Dahlia” as a vehicle for Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Bendix. Shot quickly by director George Marshall, the film ranked among the most popular films at the British box office in 1946. Chandler was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay; Ladd was noted for his role as a tough guy in what became known as the film noir genre.

Ladd appeared in several films of mixed critical and commercial reception in 1949 and 1950. These include the 1949 “The Great Gatsby”, “Chicago Deadline”, “Appointment with Danger”, and two Westerns, the 1950 “Branded” and the 1951 “Red Mountain”. These dynamic action-packed roles were followed by Ladd’s most memorable performance as the drifter Shane, an honest character troubled by conflicting emotions. The role of Shane became the highpoint of Ladd’s film career. Directed by George Steven, the 1953 Western “Shane” won an Academy Award for its Technicolor cinematography and became a critical as well as commercial success for Paramount Pictures.

Alan Ladd entered independent film making in 1954 through the founding of  Jaguar Productions, a Hollywood production company that released films through Warner Brothers. His first film, the 1954 Western “Drum Beat” was successful and was followed by the 1955 “Hell on Frisco Bay” with Edward G. Robinson, and the 1957 Western “The Big Land” in which he acted opposite Virginia Mayo. In the following year, Ladd acted with his eleven-year old son David and co-star Olivia de Havilland in the 1958 Technicolor Western “The Proud Rebel”, a Michael Curtiz film produced by Samuel Goldwyn Jr. 

Ladd continued his acting with films for United Artist, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox Studios. He also starred in directors Ferdinando Baldi and Terence Young’s 1961 “Duel of Champions”, an epic Roman adventure film shot in Italy. In 1963, Ladd accepted his last film role, the former gunslinger turned actor Nevada Smith, for director Edward Dmytryk’s drama “The Carpetbaggers”. This film adaptation of Harold Robbins’s novel was released to financial success in April of 1964, three months after Ladd’s death. 

Alan Ladd was recuperating after knee injuries at his Palm Springs house in January of 1964. He had been suffering badly from insomnia and found solace in sedatives and an increasing dependence on alcohol. The butler saw Ladd on his bed in the morning of the twenty-ninth of January; upon his return in the afternoon, the butler found Ladd dead on the bed. The death was officially ruled accidental. Alan Ladd died at the age of fifty due to cerebral edema caused by acute overdose of alcohol and a mixture of tranquilizers. Ladd was interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale California. 

Notes: The CMG Worldwide website has a page on Alan Ladd which includes a biography and a complete filmography: http://www.cmgww.com/stars/ladd/

The Hollywood’s Golden Age website has an extensive biography on Alan Ladd at: http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/actors/alan_ladd.html

Writer, critic and performer Trav S.D. has an excellent 2020 article on his WordPress site “Travalanche” entitled “The Short Life of Alan Ladd” at: https://travsd.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/the-short-life-of-alan-ladd/

An extensive article entitled “The Dynamic Duos Blogathon: Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake” can be found on the “ShadowsandSatin” WordPress site: https://shadowsandsatin.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/the-dynamic-duos-blogathon-alan-ladd-and-veronica-lake/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Alan Ladd as Philip Raven”, 1942, “This Gun for Hire”, Publicity Photo, Paramount Pictures 

Second Insert Image: Film Poster, “Captain Carey, U.S.A>”, 1950, Director Mitchell Leisen, Cinematography John F. Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Alan Ladd”, Paramount Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Fourth Insert Image: Film Poster, “the Blue Dahlia”, 1946, Director George Marshall, Cinematography Lionel Lindon, Paramount Pictures, 76 x 102 cm, Private Collection 

Fifth Insert Image: Eugene R Richee, “Alan Ladd”, 1941, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Film Poster, “Calcutta”, 1947, Director John Farrow, Cinematography John F. Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Dirk Bogarde: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Sir Dirk Bogarde”, circa 1950s, Studio Portrait, Gelatin Silver Print, The Rank Organization, London

Born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde at West Hampstead, London in March of 1921, Dirk Bogarde was an English actor, screenwriter and novelist. After becoming a matinee idol through his work in such films as the 1954 “Doctor in the House” and 1958 “A Tale of Two Cities”, he made a bold and provocative career decision to accept those challenging roles that pushed the scope of cinema. 

Dirk Bogarde was the eldest of three children born to Ulric van den Bogaerde, the art editor of London’s “The Times”, and former Scottish actress Margaret Niven. When living conditions became crowded at the family’s north London home, he lived for a period with relatives in Scotland where he attended Glasgow’s University College School and Allan Glen’s High School of Science. Under a 1937 scholarship, Bogarde completed a two-year study of commercial art at the Chelsea College of Art where he attended classes led by draftsman and sculptor Henry Moore.

Bogarde worked as a commercial artist and set designer in the late 1930s. Interested in acting, he apprenticed with Sally Latimer and John Penrose’s Amersham Repertory Players and made his acting debut, albeit with only one line, at the small, independent Q Theater in west London. Bogarde’s stage debut in London’s West End occurred a few months later in John Boynton Priestley’s 1939 comedic drama “Cornelius”. In the same year, he made his film debut as an uncredited extra in Anthony Kimmins’s 1939 musical comedy “Come On George!” which starred George Formby and Patricia Kirkwood. 

After Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, Dirk Bogarde joined the Queen’s Royal Regiment in 1940 as an officer in the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit. He eventually achieved the rank of Major and, in his five years of active duty, was awarded seven medals for his service. In addition to his military duties, Bogarde painted and wrote poetry during the war; his paintings of England’s war effort are housed in London’s Imperial War Museum. As a member of the Photographic Intelligence Unit, Bogarde, at the age of twenty-four, was at the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, an experience that had a profound, lasting effect on him. 

Bogarde returned to acting after the war and made his first appearance, under the stage name of Dirk Bogarde, in the 1947 BBC studio production of Michael Clayton Hutton’s “Power Without Glory” held at London’s Fortune Theater. After signing a contract in 1947 with the entertainment conglomerate The Rank Organization, he was given the role of a police radio caller in John Carstairs’s 1947 film noir “Dancing with Crime”. His first credited role was that of the sweet-talking footman William Latch in Ian Dalrymple and Peter Proud’s 1948 drama “Sin of Esther Waters”. Initially given a supporting role in this proposed Stewart Granger film, Bogarde was chosen for the lead role after Granger left the production. His acting skill opposite Kathleen Ryan in this 1948 film led to a long-term contract with the Rank studio.

After three years as an apprentice Rank actor, Dirk Bogarde was given the role of a young criminal in Basil Dearden’s 1950 crime thriller “The Blue Lamp”. The film became the most successful feature of the year and established Bogarde as an actor of note. His role as the cop killer Tom Riley was the first of many intense but fascinating villains he would play. A few years later, Bogarde became one of the most popular British actors in the 1950s through his role as a medical student in Ralph Thomas’s 1954 light comedy “Doctor in the House”. One of the most successful films in the Rank Organization’s history, the comedy spawned six sequels and both a television and radio series. . 

After meeting black-listed American expatriate director Joseph Losey, Bogarde appeared as convict Frank Clemmens in Losey’s successful 1954 crime film noir “The Sleeping Tiger”. Their association would result in several important films a decade later, most notably the 1963 chilling British  drama “The Servant” and the 1967 Cannes Film Festival Special Jury winner “Accident”. Bogarde starred in over a dozen films during the 1950s including Philip Leacock’s successful 1956 “The Spanish Gardener”, Ralph Thomas’s 1958 adaptation of “A Tale of Two Cities”, and Anthony Asquith’s 1959 “Libel”, in which Bogarde played three different roles opposite Olivia de Havilland. 

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bogarde acted alongside many renowned stars and under many talented directors. He played the decadent valet Hugo Barrett in Losey’s 1963 “The Servant” which earned him a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award. Bogarde starred as a German industrialist in Luchino Visconti’s 1969 “The Damned” which also featured Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin. Two years later, he portrayed Gustav von Aschenbach in Visconti’s adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel “Death in Venice”. For the Charles Vidor/George Cukor 1960 biographical romance film “Song Without End”, Bogarde portrayed Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt; his co-stars were French actresses Capucine and Genevière Page.

Dirk Bogarde left acting in 1977 and began a second career as an author. The first work published was a memoir that described his childhood and early career as an actor entitled “A Postillion Struck by Lightning”. Highly literate with an elegant and thoughtful style, Bogarde wrote over his twenty-year literary career fifteen best-selling books of which nine were memoirs and six novels. He was also the author of numerous essays, reviews and poems for print publications.

Bogarde had a minor stroke in November of 1987. Nine years later, he underwent angioplasty and suffered a major stroke following the operation. Although paralyzed on one side and his speech affected, Borgarde completed the final volume of his autobiography and also published an edition of his journalism. In 1992, he was created a Knight Bachelor in the United Kingdom. On the eighth of May in 1999 at the age of seventy-eight, Sir Dirk Bogarde died in his London home from a heart attack. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at his former estate, Le Pigeonnier, in Grasse, southern France. 

Notes:  Dirk Bogarde was in a life-long relationship with English actor Anthony Forwood, who was born Ernest Lytton Leslie Forwood in October of 1915 as a descendent of the Forwood Baronetcy, an English landed-gentry family. After Borgarde had gained success in his acting career, he moved to a cottage at the Forwood family home, Buckinghamshire’s Bendrose Estate. Bogarde eventually bought the adjoining estate where he and Forwood lived in its renovated main house until 1960. After residing in both France and Italy for many years, they returned to London in early 1988. Anthony Forwood, who had been previously diagnosed with liver cancer and Parkinson’s disease, passed away at the age of seventy-two in May of 1988. 

An extensive history of Dirk Bogarde’s film career, written by feature correspondent Sophie Monks Kaufman for the BBC, is located at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210322-why-dirk-bogarde-was-a-truly-dangerous-film-star

The official website of the Dirk Bogarde Estate, which contains his book illustrations, personal recordings and home movies, is located at: https://dirkbogarde.co.uk

The Key Military website has a 2021 biographical article in its “Britain at War” series, written by Ellie Evans, on Dirk Bogarde’s service during World War II:  https://www.keymilitary.com/article/military-man-behind-matinee-idol

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Sir Dirk Bogarde”, circa 1950s, Studio Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Basil Dearden, “Dirk Bogarde as Matt Sullivan”, 1952, “The Gentle Gunman”, Cinematography Gordon Dines, Ealing Studios

Third and Fourth Insert Image: Director John Schlesinger, “Dirk Bogarde as Robert Gold”, 1965, “Darling”, Cinematography Kenneth Higgins, Vic Films Production, Appia Films, and Joseph Janni Production 

Fifth Insert Image: Director Basil Dearden, “Dirk Bogarde as Melville Farr”, 1961, “Victim”, Cinematography Otto Heller, Rank Film Distributors

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Dirk Bogarde and Anthony Forwood”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print, Dirk Bogarde Estate

Massimo Girotti and “Ossessione”: Film History Series

Luchino Visconti, “Ossessione (Obsession)”, 1943, Film Gifs of Massimo Girotti as Gino Costa, Cinematography Aldo Tonti and Domenico Scala, Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane

Born at the Macerata city of Mogliano in May of 1918, Massimo Girotti was an Italian film and stage actor whose career spanned seventy years. A swimmer and polo player, he was brought to the attention of film writer and director Mario Soldati who gave him a small part in his 1939 comedy “Dora Nelson”. Girotti began to be taken seriously after his appearances in Alessandro Blasetti’s 1941 adventure film “La Corona di Ferro (The Iron Crown)” and Roberto Rossellini’s 1942 war drama “Un Pilota Ritorna (A Pilot Returns)”. His rise to fame began with his role opposite Clara Calamai in Luchino Visconti’s 1943 crime drama “Ossessione”.

After the war years, Girotti was starring in several movies each year, among which were Roberto Rossellini and Marcello Pagliero’s 1946 melodrama “Desire” and Pietro Germi’s 1949 Mafia drama “In Nome dell Legge (In the Name of the Law)”, co-written by Federico Fellini. In 1950, Girotti starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s first full-length feature, “Cronaci di un Amore (Story of a Love Affair)”. After playing Spartacus in Riccardo Freda’s 1952 “Spartaco”, he rejoined Visconti for the 1954 “Senso”, a historical melodrama co-written by Visconti, Suso Cecchi d’Amico and Tennessee Williams.  

In the following years, Massimo Girotti worked with several directors including Mauro Bolognini, best known for his 1960 drama “Il bell’Antonio (Handsome Antonio)” written by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Mario Alberto Lattuada who co-directed Federico Fellini’s 1950 “Luci del Varietà (Variety Lights)”. Girotti starred with Terence Stamp and Silvana Mangano in Pasolini’s 1968 surrealist psychological drama “Teorema (Theorem)”. He was cast two years later for Pasolini’s “Medea” in which he played opposite opera soprano Maria Callas. 

In 1972, Girotti had the role of Marcel in Bernardo Bertolucci’s erotic drama “Last Tango in Paris”, which starred Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. Although he appeared mainly in character roles for the next thirty years, Girotti was in such notable films as Joseph Losey’s 1976 mystery drama “Monsieur Klein” nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as Visconti’s final film, the 1976 period drama “The Innocent”, an adaptation of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s novel “The Intruder”. 

Massimo Girotti had a starring role in Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Özpetek’s 2003 mystery drama “La Finestra di Fronte (Facing Windows)”. After completing the filming of his role, Massimo Girotti unexpectedly died of a heart attack in Rome on the fifth of January in 2003. “La Finestra di Fronte” was released at the end of February. For his role in the film, Girotti won the David di Donatello Award for Best Actor given by the Academy for Italian Cinema. 

The 1943 “Ossessione” is an Italian crime drama directed and co-written by Luchino Visconti for his directorial debut. Considered by some critics as the first Italian neorealist film, it was an unauthorized and uncredited adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1934 novel “The Postman Always Rings Twice”. Inspired by the details of the 1927 Ruth Snyder-Judd Gray case, the novel was adapted seven times as a film, twice as a play, and once as an opera and radio drama. Visconti’s unauthorized version was the second time as a film adaptation and followed French director Pierre Chenal’s 1939 “Le Dernier Tournant (The Last Turn in the Road)”.

“Ossessione” starred actress Clara Calamai as Giovanna Bragana, the ill-fated protagonist; Juan de Landa as Giovanna’s older husband Giuseppe Bragana; and Massimo Girotti as Gino Costa, the wandering tramp who begins an affair with Giovanna at the couple’s petrol station. This film became a turning point in Girotti’s film career as a serious actor and rising star; Clara Calami’s portrayal as the femme fatala, who conspired to murder her husband, became her most remembered role.  

Luchino Visconti’s film was made during the years of dictator Benito Mussolini’s far-right Fascist government which exerted censorship over many aspects of Italian life. Visconti originally sought to use an adaptation of a story by Italian realist writer Giovann Verga; however, that project was denied by the Fascist authorities who worried that its subject matter of bandits in Italy would tarnish the country. Visconti eventually collaborated with several filmmakers and writers, including Gianni Puccini and Giuseppe De Santis, to adapt a French translation of James Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice”.

Stark realism was one of the prominent aspects of the 1943 “Ossessione”. Visconti chose realistic Italian locations that were specifically rural and for the most part unromantic. His film did not idealize its characters; each character’s temperament and daily routines were captured through incisive glimpses. Visconti employed medium and long shots for nearly the whole story, with close-ups used only at those moments of intense emotion. Filming all the characters together as a complex larger cast, he used focus depth to highlight the variety of action occurring in the frame.   

“Ossessione” was competed and released in 1943; however, it was  not the innocent murder mystery that the authorities were expecting. After several screenings in Rome and northern Italy, outraged reactions from both Fascist and Church authorities led to the banning of the film and ultimately its destruction. All current prints of the film were made from a duplicate negative that Visconti had kept. As Visconti had never obtained the rights to film Cain’s novel and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided to produce its own authorized adaptation in 1946, Visconti’s “Ossessione” was not released in the United States until 1976. The Italian Ministry of Culture later placed Visconti’s film version on its preservation list of one hundred Italian films produced between 1942 and 1978. 

Notes: A biographical article on Massimo Girotti with film scenes from “Senso” and “La Finestra di Fronte” can be found at the European Film Star Postcards site located at: https://filmstarpostcards.blogspot.com/2019/09/massimo-girotti.html

In his screenplay of “Ossessione”, Luchino Visconti followed the general outline of Cain’s novel; however, he added an interlude segment in which Gino Costa is befriended by a street performer known as Io Spagnolo, the Spaniard. This role was played by Italian actor Elio Mancuzzo. An article on Mancuzzo’s life and his role in “Ossessione” can be found at: https://godsandfoolishgrandeur.blogspot.com/search?q=ossessione

Top Insert Image: Italian Postcard, “Massimo Girotti in La Corona di Ferro (The Iron Crown)”, Balleri & Fratini, Florence, Italy

Second Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “Massimo Girotti as Gino Costa”, 1943, “Ossessione”, Cinematography Aldo Tonti and Domenico Scala, Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane  

Third Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “Massimo Girotti and Clara Calamai”, 1943, “Ossessione”, Cinematography Aldo Tonti and Domenico Scala, Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane  

Fourth Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “Massimo Girotti and Juan de Landa”, 1943, “Ossessione”, Cinematography Aldo Tonti and Domenico Scala, Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane  

Bottom Insert Image: Italian Postcard, “Massimo Girotti”, Publicity Card for Lux Film, Private Collection

Kerwin Mathews: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Kerwin Mathews”, 1960, Publicity Photo, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, Columbia Pictures Corporation

Born in Seattle, Washington in January of 1926, Kerwin Mathews was an American film and theatrical actor. Although he appeared in several war and crime dramas, Mathews is best known today for his starring roles in the heroic fantasy adventure films of the 1950s and 1960s.

Born the only child of the family, Kerwin Mathews was two years old when he and his divorced mother moved to Janesville, the county seat of Rock County, Wisconsin. He graduated from the city’s high school in 1943 where he had been active in the school’s theatrical productions. During World War II, Mathews served in the United States Army Air Forces as both a pilot and a swimming instructor. After his military service, he studied for two years at the private Milton College before transferring, with drama and musical scholarships, to Beloit College. 

After graduating from Beloit College, Mathews remained for three years as a member of its faculty with courses in speech and the dramatic arts; he also appeared in productions by regional theater assembles. After teaching English at Lake Geneva’s high school in the early 1950s, Mathews decided to pursue an acting career in California. While training at the Tony-Award winning Pasadena Playhouse, he was noticed by a casting agent from Columbia Pictures and, upon approval by studio head Harry Cohen, signed to a seven-year contract. 

As an actor on television, Kerwin Mathews made his debut appearance as Major Caldwell in “The Escape of Mr. Proteus”, a 1954 episode in American Broadcast Company’s science-fiction series “Space Patrol”. Between 1954 and 1959, he had a variety of roles on major theatrical series including “The Ford Television Theater”, “Playhouse 90”, “Matinee Theater” and the “Goodyear Television Playhouse”. Mathews had the lead role of Johann Strauss Jr. in the Walt Disney 1963 two-part television film “The Waltz King”, a biographical film on the struggles of Johann Strauss Jr. to prove himself as talented as his composer father.

Mathews’s first appearance on the big screen was an uncredited role as a reporter in Fred F. Sears’s 1955 crime film noir “Cell 2455, Death Row”. He received his first film credit in Phil Karlson’s 1955 heist film “5 Against the House” for his acting alongside Guy Madison, Kim Novak, Brian Keith and William Conrad. In 1957, Mathews appeared in a starring role as actor Lee J. Cobb’s son in Vincent Sherman’s crime film “The Garment Jungle”. His first leading role in film was Sergeant Thomas A. (Tom) Sloan in Paul Wendkos’s 1958 World War Two film for Columbia Pictures, “Tarawa Beachhead”, a role which gained him critical recognition for his performance.  

Both handsome and an agile fencer from his days at Beloit College, Kerwin Mathews was chosen by Columbia Pictures for the role of the dauntless hero in Nathan Juran’s 1958 classic Technicolor fantasy-adventure “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”. This film featured stop-motion animated creatures created by the master of the craft, Ray Harryhausen. The climatic battle between Mathews and the sword-wielding skeleton became a classic scene in the fantasy adventure genre. The first of the three Sinbad movies from Columbia, “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” was  selected in 2008 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

In 1960, Mathews had the leading role in another Columbia/Harryhausen film, director Jack Sher’s 1960 “The 3 Worlds of Gulliver” based upon Jonathan Swift’s 1726 “Gulliver’s Travels”. In 1962, he was given the lead role in Nathan Juran’s 1962 “Jack the Giant Killer” with stop-motion animation by Project Unlimited, an Academy Award winner for its work on George Pal’s 1960 “The Time Machine”. Despite his previous appearances in such movies as “The Last Blitzkrieg” with Van Johnson and “The Devil at 4 O’Clock” with Sinatra and Spencer Tracy, Mathews felt that Columbia was now restricting his roles to the adventure genre. 

Kerwin Mathews appeared in one last film for Columbia Pictures, the 1963 psycho thriller “Maniac” and then traveled overseas as a freelance actor in a search for better roles. However even in Europe, the roles he managed to obtain were all in the adventure genre. Mathews starred in the 1960 Italian-French epic “The Warrior Empress” and Hammer Films’s “The Pirates of Blood River” for Columbia. He next had the lead role in two French spy films written and directed by André Hunebelle, the 1963 “OSS 117 Is Unleashed’ and its sequel, the 1964 French-Italian collaboration “Shadow of Evil”. In 1968, Mathews  starred in two low-budget films in Europe, “Battle Beneath the Earth” filmed in England and “The Killer Likes Candy”, a spy film directed by Maurice Cloche and Federico Chentrens.

Mathews returned to the United States in 1969 and continued acting. He had the supporting role of Marquette in Gordon Douglas’s 1970 American Western for United Artist, “Barquero”, which starred Lee Van Cleef, Warren Oates and Forrest Tucker. In 1971, Mathews had supporting roles in Harry Essex’s monster film “Octaman”, part of the RiffTrax Live series, and the television movie “Death Takes a Holiday”. His last lead role was in Nathan Juran’s 1973 horror film “The Boy Who Cried Werewolf”, a film he immediately disavowed..

After guest-starring on the television series “General Hospital” and “Ironside”, Kerwin Mathews ended his acting career in 1978. He had relocated to San Francisco where he managed Pierre Deux, an antique and furniture retail establishment. Throughout his later years, Mathews was a committed patron of the city’s various opera and ballet companies. He died in his sleep at his San Francisco home at the age of eighty-one in July of 2007. Kerwin Mathews was survived by his life-long partner of forty-six years, Tom Nicoll, a British display manager he met in Knightsbridge, London in 1961. 

Top Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews as Alan Mitchell, 1957, “The Garment Jungle”, Film Still, Cinematographer Joseph F. Biroc, Director Vincent Sherman, Columbia Pictures 

Second Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews, “Barquero”, 1970, Film Still, Cinematographer Jerry Finnerman, Director Gordon Douglas, United Artists 

Third Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews, “Jack the Giant Killer”, 1962, Film Still, Cinematographer David S. Horsley, Director Nathan Juran, United Artists

Fourth Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews, “OSS 117 Is Unleashed”, 1963, Film Still, Cinematographer Raymond Pierre Lemoigne, Director André Hunebelle

Bottom Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews and Charles Van Johnson, “The Last Blitzkrieg”, 1959, Studio Publicity Shot, Cinematographer Edward Scaife, Director Arthur Dreifuss, Columbia Pictures 

Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne: Film History Series

Born in the West Midland city of Coventry in April of 1929, Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne was an English stage, television and film actor. Among the many honors for his work, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1987 New Years Honors List, which highlights the good works by citizens of the Commonwealth. Hawthorne was later knighted in the 1999 New Years Honors List for services to Theater, Film and Television.

The second child of physician Charles Barnard Hawthorne and his wife Agnes Rosemary Rice, Nigel Hawthorne was three years old when the family moved to the Gardens district of Cape Town, South Africa. He attended Cape Town’s St. George’s Grammar School and later its Christian Brothers College. Hawthorne enrolled at the University of Cape Town where he acted in plays with fellow student Theo Aronson, who became biographer to England’s royal family and partner of historian Brian Roberts. Hawthorne’s professional theatrical debut was the character Archie Fellows in  the 1950 Cape Town production of British playwright Edward Percy Smith’s 1940 thriller “The Shop at Sly Corner”. 

Dissatisfied with life in South Africa, Hawthorne relocated to London where he pursued a career in acting. Through his performances, he gradually gained recognition as one of London’s great character actors. Starting in the late 1950s, Hawthorne appeared in various character roles in British television series. Seeking opportunities in the United States, he traveled to New York City where, in 1974, he was cast as Touchstone in Broadway production of Shakespeare’s comedy “As You Like It” at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. Through the persuasion of British stage actors Ian McKellen and Judi Dench, Hawthorne joined the Stratford-upon-Avon based Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid-1970s.

In 1980, Nigel Hawthorne began his most famous television role of Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs, in the BBC2 political satire series “Yes Minister” which ran from 1980 to 1984. He later portrayed the character of the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel “Yes Prime Minister”. For this role, Hawthorne won four British Academy Television Awards for Best Light Entertainment Performance. 

Hawthorne appeared as Mr. Kinnnoch in Richard Attenborough’s long delayed 1982 historical film “Gandhi”, which became the winner of eight Academy Awards and the third highest grossing film in the world for 1982. In the same year, he appeared as dissident Russian scientist Dr. Pyotr Baranovich in Clint Eastwood’s cold war thriller “Firefox”. Hawthorne returned to the New York stage in 1990 to appear as British writer C. S. Lewis in the Broadway production of William Nicholson’s “Shadowlands” performed at the Brooks Atkinson Theater. For that role, Hawthorne won the 1991 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. 

In 1991, Nigel Hawthorne played his most famous theatrical role, King George III, in playwright Alan Bennett’s fictionalized biographical study “The Madness of George III”. Bennett’s play toured the United Kingdom and the United States before returning to London’s Royal National Theater in 1993. For this role, Hawthorne won a Best Actor Olivier Award. He also appeared in the same role for the 1994 film adaption of the play, entitled “The Madness of King George”, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Actor.  

Hawthorne followed this success with the role of George the Duke of Clarence, playing opposite his friend Ian McKellen, in Richard Loncraine’s 1995 British period drama “Richard III” adapted by McKellen and Loncraine from Shakespeare’s play. He won his sixth BAFTA award for his role in the 1996 television mini-series “The Fragile Heart” and also drew praise for his role of Georgie Pillson in the London Weekend Television series “Mapp and Lucia”, based on the three 1930s novels by Edward Frederic Benson. Hawthorne next appeared in the film role of U.S. President Martin Van Buren in director Steven Spielberg’s 1997 historical drama “Amistad”, a story based on the 1839 events aboard the Spanish slave ship La Amistad and the legal battle that followed.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Nigel Hawthorne began work as a voice actor and appeared in several animated films. In 1978, he was cast as the voice of Campion in Martin Rosen’s “Watership Down”, a British animated adventure-drama film based on Richard Adams’s 1972 novel. Hawthorne was also cast in two Disney films: the voice of Ffiewddur Fflam in the 1985 dark fantasy “The Black Cauldron” and Professor Porter in the 1999 “Tarzan”, the first animated version of the novel. 

In 1968, Hawthorne met his life-long partner Trevor Bentham who at that time was the stage manager for the Royal Court Theater in the West End of London. Bentham later became a scriptwriter and wrote for John Irvin’s 1995 romantic comedy “A Month by the Lake” and “The Clandestine Marriage”. From 1979 until Hawthorne’s death, the couple lived together and acted as fundraisers for the North Hertfordshire Hospice and other local charities. 

In 2001 after undergoing several surgeries for diagnosed pancreatic cancer, Nigel Hawthorne was discharged from the hospital in time for the Christmas holidays. On the twenty-sixth of December in 2001, he died at the age of seventy-two from a heart attack at his home. His funeral, attended by many of his fellow actors, was held at St. Mary’s, the Parish Church of Thundridge, Hertfordshire; Trevor Bentham served as one of the pallbearers.

Notes: Nigel Hawthorne completed his autobiography just before he died. “Straight Face”, which covered his ambition to be an actor, his career, and his battle with cancer, was published posthumously in 2002 by Hodder & Stoughton. 

An interview with Sir Nigel Hawthorne and film critic Dan Lybarger, in which Hawthorne discussed King George III, director David Mamet, and the film “The Big Brass Ring”, can be found at the Lybarger Links website located at: http://www.tipjar.com/dan/hawthorne.htm

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nigel Hawthorne”, Studio Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: “Derek Fowlds, Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Eddington”, circa 1980, “Yes Minister”, Television Series Studio Shot, BBC2

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nigel Hawtorne”, Studio Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Fourth Insert Image: “Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren”, 1994, “The Madness of King George”, Film Clip Shot, Director Nicholas Hylner, Cinematographer Andrew Dunn

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nigel Hawthorne and Trevor Bentham”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print

 

Wesley Barry: Film History Series

Born in Los Angeles, California in August of 1907, Wesley E. Barry was an American actor, director and producer. A child star in silent films from 1915 to 1924, he made a successful transition in his adult years to other activities in the film industry.

In 1914 at the age of seven, Wesley Barry was noticed by a director for his distinctive facial features and given a contract with Kalem Studios, a production and distribution film company founded by screenwriter Frank J. Marion, Biograph production manager Samuel Long, and wealthy film distributor George Kleine. With his freckles covered with greasepaint, Barry made his screen debut in the 1915 “The Phoney Cannibal”, a silent short starring the child-star duo Ham Hamilton and Bud Duncan. His first appearance in a feature film was the role of a freckled school boy in Marshall Neilan’s 1917 “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”, which starred Mary Pickford as Rebecca. 

Noted now for his freckles, Barry soon became a much demanded child actor. In 1919, he was in Neilan’s comedy drama “Daddy Long Legs”, which starred Mary Pickford, and Cecil B. DeMille’s adventure film “Male and Female”. Barry appeared in four silent films in 1920; but it was the success of Neilan and John McDernott’s 1920 comedy drama “Dinty”, specifically written for Barry, that made him a star in his own right. Throughout the 1920s, he appeared in twenty-two screen productions, among which were the 1922 “Penrod” with Our Gang actor Ernest “Ernie’ Morrison; the 1924 comedy “George Washington Jr.” with actress Gertrude Olmstead; and the 1924 sports comedy “Battling Bunyan” with Frank Campeau, known for his roles in cowboy westerns.

Wesley Barry, grown out of his infancy, made minor film appearances in sound films throughout the 1930s. He appeared in director John Ford’s 1937 drama “The Plough and the Stars”, which starred Barbara Stanwyck and Preston Foster, and Hal Roach’s musical comedy “Pick a Star”, released through MGM in 1937 and, later, by Astor Pictures in 1954. Barry did play the lead role the 1938 western “The Mexicali Kid” in which he played under the direction of Wallace For and  opposite Jack Randall. He stopped acting regularly after his appearance in the 1939 “Stunt Pilot”; his last role on the big screen was an uncredited appearance in the 1943 baseball comedy “Ladies’ Day”. 

Beginning in the 1940s, Barry directed and produced films, a career which would extend thirty years. For about a decade, he directed B movies including some in the “Joe Palooka” and “Bowery Boys” series. Barry also worked in the field of television where he directed several episodes of “Lassie”, the police dramas “Mod Squad” and “The Rookies”, and the western series starring Guy Madison, “The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok”. In 1952, Barry both directed the drama film “The Steel Fist”, starring Roddy McDowell, and co-produced Frank McDonald’s action film “Sea Tiger”. Among the westerns he directed were “The Secret of Outlaw Flats”, starring Guy Madison and Andy Devine, and “Trail Blazers” with Alan Hale Jr, both films released in 1953.

Wesley Barry founded his own production company Genie Production in the beginning of the 1960s. His first film though his studio, now considered a sci-fi cult classic, was the 1962 “The Creation of the Humanoids”. The film, starring Don Megowan, was based on the story of robots, disparagingly referred to as ‘clickers’, who provided android bodies to the dying, radiation-affected  human race. Barry’s studio produced two more films in his lifetime: the animated 1963 fantasy “The Jolly Genie” and a 1965 television documentary “The Market”.

Barry also had a prolific career as an assistant director on many major motion pictures, most notably director Roger Corman’s 1967 American gangster film “The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre”, one of the few Corman films backed by a major Hollywood studio, in this case 20th Century Fox. Barry’s last credit as assistant director in the film industry was a 1975 episode of “The Rookies”. Wesley Barry died on the 11th of April of 1994 at the age of eighty-six in Fresno, California.

Note: Wesley Barry’s “The Creation of the Humanoids”, based on an original story and screenplay by Jay Simms, was produced on a limited budget, apparent from the film’s rudimentary sets and costumes. At a time when black and white film stock was still being used for many major productions, Barry and co-producer Edward J. Kay opted for the added expense of color film. The cinematography was done by twice-Academy Award winner Hal Mohr who used all his experience to make the best of the sets. The makeup artist was Jack Pierce who created the iconic “Frankenstein” and “Bride of Frankenstein” makeups for Universal Pictures. 

“The Creation of the Humanoids” can be found on disc and many cable venues. It is also located at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/tcoth44546478

Top Insert Image: John J. Mescall, “Wesley Barry”, 1935, Film Shot from “Night Life of the Gods”, Director Lowell Sherman 

Second Insert Image: Film Poster, “The County Fair”, 1920 Silent Film, Directors Edmund Mortimer and Maurice Tourneur, Cinematogaphers René Guissart and Charles Van Enger

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Wesley Barry and Molly Malone”, 1924, Publicity Card for “Battling Bunyan”, Card Stock, Director Paul Hurst, Cinematographer Frank Cotner

Fourth Insert Image: Film Poster, “Creation of the Humanoids”, 1962, Director Wesley Barry, Cinematographer Hal Mohr

Bottom Insert Image: Film Poster, “The Mexicali Kid”, 1938, Director Wallace Fox, Cinematography Bert Longenecker, Monogram Pictures

 

John Dall: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “John Dall”, 1948, Publicity Shot for Universal International, Gelatin Silver Print

Born in New York City in May of 1920, John Dall Thompson was an American stage and film actor. The younger of two sons born to Charles Thompson and Henny Worthington, he moved with his family in the 1920s to Panama, where his father was employed as a civil engineer for airport construction. After performing at a local theater, Dall first gave thought to the possibility of acting as a career. Due to the death of Charles Thompson by suicide in 1929, the family chose to return to New York City.

John Dall attended the Horace Mann School, a private college-preparatory school in the Bronx, and enrolled at Columbia University with the intention of studying engineering. He soon left the university and studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and the Theodore Irvine School of Theater. Dall also took theater courses in New Orleans at the Petit Theatre, a historic French Quarter playhouse founded in 1916. 

Dall performed for six years in various stock companies, primarily the Children’s Theater founded in New York City in 1924 by British actress and playwright Clare Tree Major. He also worked in several theater companies headed by such performers as Academy Award winner Aline MacMahon, actor Arthur William Byron, and stage and screen actress Edith Atwater. During the 1941-1942 season, Dall had small roles on Broadway which included the 1920 science-fiction play “R.U.R.” by Czech writer Karel Čapek. In 1942-1943, Dall had the lead role of Quizz Martin in the touring production of Maxwell Anderson’s “The Eve of St Mark” which later moved to Broadway. 

John Dall’s performance in the Broadway version of “The Eve of St Mark” caught the attention of the wife of Jack Warner, founder of Warner Brothers Pictures. This resulted in a film contract with the studio; a proviso was added to the contract that allowed Dall personal time for stage performances. Dall’s first film with Warner Brothers was director Irving Rapper’s 1945 “The Corn is Green”, a drama starring Bette Davis as a schoolteacher bringing education to a Welsh coal mining town.  Dall played the lead role of miner Morgan Evans and was nominated for the 1946 Academy Award / Best Supporting Actor. 

Impressed with the film rushes for “The Corn is Green”, Warner Brothers signed Dall to a new contract. He became one of the studio’s six contract players that were to be built into stars; the others included Lauren Bacall, Dane Clark, Faye Emerson, Robert Hutton and William Prince. In 1944, Dall returned to the stage with the lead role in playwright Norman Krasna’s highly successful “Dear Ruth”, which eventually ran for six-hundred and eighty performances. The film rights to the play, however, were purchased by Paramount Studio which cast William Holden in Dall’s original role. 

Warner Brothers purchased the film rights to John Patrick’s play “Hasty Heart” with the intention of giving the lead film role to John Dall. In 1945, Dall performed “Hasty Heart” on a three-month stage tour. However as it took several more years before the film was started, casting changes gave the lead role to Irish-British actor Richard Todd. In May of 1946, Warners released Dall from his contract after filming only one role for the studio.

Although Paramount Studio cited interest in signing Dall for an adaption of ”The Wayfarers” based on Becky Chambers’s series of books, Dall signed a seven-year contract with David Selznick’s Vanguard Films in May of 1946. He performed “Hasty Heart” during the summer theater season but was never given any roles by Selznick. Signing with Universal International, he played Canadian actress Deanna Durbin’s love interest in Irving Pichel’s 1947 musical comedy “Something in the Wind”. Dall next appeared in a supporting role in Michael Gordon’s 1948 post-Civil War drama “Another Part of the Forest”. 

Founded by Alfred Hitchcock and his longtime associate Sidney Bernstein at the end of World War II, Transatlantic Pictures chose John Dall for one of the lead roles in its first production. Dall and actor Farley Granger played the two killers who matched wits with James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Technicolor 1948 crime thriller “Rope”. On its theatrical release, the film performed poorly at the box office; screenwriter Arthur Laurents attributed the poor performance to audience uneasiness with the homosexual undertones between the characters played by Dall and Granger.

Dall did an hour episode for the ABC anthology radio series “Theater Guild on the Air” and then appeared on Broadway in an adaption of Jean-Paul Satre’s “Red Gloves” with Charles Boyer. In 1949, he made his television debut in The Chevolet Tele-Theatre’s production “Miracle in the Rain”. Dall appeared as one of the leads in Joseph H. Lewis’s 1950 crime film-noir “Gun Crazy” playing opposite femme-fatale actress Peggy Cummins. He later had supporting roles in the 1950 crime film-noir “The Man Who Cheated Himself”, playing opposite Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt, and in a revival on Broadway of the romantic drama “The Heiress”, playing alongside Basil Rathbone.

Throughout the 1950s, John Dall appeared in stock productions of such plays as “Gramercy Ghost”, “The Hasty Heart”, “Born Yesterday” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner”. He worked extensively in television and appeared in guest roles on such shows as Studio One in Hollywood, General Electric Theater, Schlitz Playhouse, The Clock, Broadway Television Theater, and Lights Out. In 1955, Dall returned to Broadway for writer and director Leslie Stevens’s “Champagne Complex”. 

Dall’s first film role after a span of eight years was that of the Roman soldier Marcus Glabus, based on the life of Roman military commander Gaius Claudius Glaber, in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 epic historical drama “Spartacus”.  This film won four Academy Awards and had the highest ranking box office in Universal Studio’s history until “Airport” in 1970. Dall’s final film performance was as the villain Zaren in George Pal’s 1961 science-fiction film “Atlantis, the Lost Continent”. 

As to John Dall’s personal life, there is very little verifiable written record. According to music journalist Phil Milstein, at the time of his death Dall had lapsed into alcoholism and was living with his partner, actor Clement Brace. While visiting London in October of 1970, John Dall sustained a serious fall. He died three months later of cardiac arrest, a complication of myocarditis, at his Beverly Hills home in January of 1971 at the age of fifty. His body was donated to medical science. Dall’s papers and correspondence are housed at the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, California. 

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “John Dall”,  Date Unknown, Studio Publicity Shot, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Joseph A. Valentine, “John Dall, James Stewart and Farley Granger”, 1948, Film Shot from “Rope”, Director Alfred Hitchcock

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Donald O’Connor, Deanna Durbin and John Dall”, 1947, Pulicity Shot for “Something in the Wind”, Director Irving Pichel, Cinematographer Milton R. Krasner

Fourth Insert Image: Sol Polito, “John Dall and Bette Davis”, 1945, Film Shot from “The Corn is Green”, Director Irving Rapper

Fifth Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “John Dall”, Date Unknown, Publicity Shot, Gelatin Silver Print

Bottom Insert Image: Russell Harlan, “John Dall”, 1950, Film Shot from “Gun Crazy”, Director Joseph H. Lewis

David Manners: Film History Series

 

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in April of 1900, David Joseph Manners, birth name Rauff de Ryther Duan Acklom, was a Canadian-American actor. It was not until 1940 that he officially changed his name, taken his mother’s maiden name, and applied to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. 

David Manners was the son of British parents, Lilian Manners and the writer George Moreby Acklom, who was at that time the headmaster of Canada’s prestigious, private boarding school Harrow House. In 1906, George Acklom emigrated to the United States and took a position as a literary advisor for New York’s publishing company E. P. Dutton.  The following year, David Manners, his older sister and mother joined his father and settled in Mount Vernon, an inner suburb of New York City. 

The Acklom family relocated in January of 1920 to West 123rd Street in Manhattan where Manners, still using the name Rauff, resided with his parents. He gained employment as an assistant publisher; however, he soon returned to Canada and enrolled to study forestry at the University of Toronto. Attracted to stage work on campus, Manners started drama training and made his acting debut in 1924 at the university’s Hart House Theater with a role in Euripides’s play “Hippolytus”.

Despite objections from his father, David Manners continued his acting career after his return to the United States. He joined English stage and screen actor Basil  Sydney’s Touring Company and, later, stage actress and director Eva Le Gallienne’s New York Civic Repertory Company. With these companies, Manners performed in theaters in Chicago and on New York City’s Broadway. He continued his acting studies under Le Gallienne and was able to get a co-starring role with actress Helen Hayes in Edgar Selwyn and Edmund Goulding’s play “Dancing Mothers” which premiered at Broadway’s Booth Theater in mid-town Manhattan.

In 1927, Manners relocated to California and was soon discovered at a Hollywood party by gay film director James Whale. His first appearance in film was an uncredited role as the pilot in the 1929 pre-code adventure film “The Sky Hawk”, directed by John G. Blystone for the Fox Film Corporation. This was followed in 1930  with the role of Lieutenant Raleigh in director James Whale’s war film “Journey’s End”. Manner’s performances in these two films received endorsements from reviewers working with Variety and The New York Times, both of which praised subsequent performances. 

In late 1930, David Manners performed perhaps his best remembered role, that of Jonathan Harker, the protagonist to Bela Lugosi’s vampire in Universal Studios’ “Dracula”. The following year, he played a blind war veteran with co-star Barbara Stanwyck in Frank Capra’s critically acclaimed romance film “The Miracle Woman”. During his brief contract with Warner Brothers Studios, Manners progressed from supporting player to true movie-star with his successful role as Teddy Taylor in the 1932 “Crooner”. Directed by Lloyd Bacon, the musical drama told the story of Taylor’s rise and fall as a singing star  

With his stardom achieved by “Crooner” and “Dracula”, Manners was able to freelance with success and worked for several years as a romantic leading man, most often tuxedo-dressed in romantic comedies and light dramas. Two exceptions to this were his role as Shep Lambert in the 1931 ensemble cast film “The Last Flight” and the role Frank Whemple, the son of archaeologist Sir Joseph Whemple, in Karl Freund’s 1932 horror  film “The Mummy”, where he played opposite Boris Karloff’s role as the mummy. Manners joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1933 but became increasingly frustrated by his Hollywood roles and film career. After appearing in three films in 1936, David Manners left the studios and retired from film work, a career containing roles in thirty-nine movies.

David Mainers continued to perform regularly on stage for the next seventeen years in tour productions, summer stock, and on Broadway. He used his influence to help promising up-and-coming actors such as Lucille Ball, who had a small role in the musical “Roman Scandals” which co-starred Manners, and Marlon Brando, with whom Manners co-starred in the Broadway production of “Truckline Café”, directed by Elia Kazan. Manners quietly financed small theatrical groups in California and paid medical bills for people in the film industry who had fallen on hard times. Under his birth name, Duan Acklom, he supported anti-drug programs and helped performers overcome addictions.

Manners married Suzanne Bushnell, a native of Ohio, in New York City on the 23rd of May in 1929. The 1930 census has the couple living in Los Angeles, along with Antonio Dumles, a twenty-two year old Filipino listed as servant. The marriage soon ended with Manners and Suzanne Bushnell divorcing in 1932. Manners changed his name legally from Acklom in 1940 and achieved citizenship while he was living in Victorville, California. He became a published novelist with his 1941 “Convenient Season”, a novel of familial reconciliation, which was followed by the 1943 novel “Under Running Laughter”, both published by E. P. Dutton. 

In 1948, David Manners began a long-term relationship with playwright and writer Frederic William (Bill) Mercer. They initially lived together at Manners’s ranch in Victorville but moved in 1956 to a residence in Pacific Palisades. Following his retirement, Manners spent his last decades pursuing personal interests including painting, writing and philosophy. In 1971, he published his views in “Look Through: An Evidence of Self Discovery”, published by El Cariso Publications. 

Manners and Mercer were partners until Bill Mercer’s death in August of 1978, Twenty years later, David Manners died at the age of ninety-eight in the health center of a  retirement community in Santa Barbara, California. His ashes were taken to  San Bernardino County and scattered at Rancho Yucca Loma in Victor Valley. It is unknown where Frederic William Mercer is buried. 

Second Insert Image: Sidney Hickox, “Katharine Hepburn and David Manners”, 1932, Still Shot from “A Bill of Divorcement”, Director George Cukor

Fourth Insert Image: John J. Mescall, “Boris Karloff, David Manners, Bela Lugosi”, 1934, Film Shot from “The Balck Cat, Director Edgar G. Ulmer

Note: I would be interested in knowing if there is a source available to purchase a copy of David Manners’s “A Convenient Season” or “Under Running Laughter”. Please send information through my contact page.

Nils Asther: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Nils Asther”, July of 1932, Publicity Shot for Cine-Mundial, A New York-based Spanish Magazine

Born in Copenhagen in January of 1897, Nils Anton Althild Asther was a Swedish gay actor who was active in Hollywood from 1926 until the mid-1950s. He was the son of Anton Andersson Asther and Hildegard Augusta Åkerlund, who had accepted his father’s proposal but was unwed at the time of Nils’s birth. Asther spent his first year as a foster child and rejoined his parents after their marriage on May 29th of 1898 in the city of Malmö. He grew up in a deeply religious Lutheran home, where homosexuality was considered a sin by the church and viewed as a disease by Swedish society.

Nils Asther, still a young man, moved to Stockholm where he studied acting under the tutelage of Swedish silent-film and stage actress Augusta Lindberg. Through the endorsement of his teacher, he received his first theatrical engagement at Lorensbergsteatern, the art performance theater in the city of Gothenburg. Asther performed in several productions in Stockholm which included two plays in 1923, “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “ The Admirable Crichton”, and the 1924 production of “Othello” at the Royal Dramatic Theater. 

In 1916 at the age of nineteen, Asther was cast by the pioneer Swedish film director Mauritz Stiller for his silent film “Vingarne (The Wings)”. This production was based the novel “Mikaël” by the internationally recognized Danish author Herman Bang. It starred silent-film actors Egil Eide, Lars Hanson, and Lill Bech, with Nils Asther in a supporting role. Besides being an early gay-themed film, it is recognized for it innovative use of a framing story, a main narrative which is divided into a set of shorter stories, and for its use of flashbacks as the primary plot source. Although only thirty minutes of its seventy-minute length survived, a 1987 restoration used still photos and title cards to bridge the missing sections. 

Now residing in Copenhagen, Nils Asther received support from actor Aage Hertel, a member of the Royal Danish Theater and a leading actor at Nordisk Film. Between 1918 and 1926, Asther appeared in a number of film roles in Denmark, Sweden and Germany. After being approached by a representative from United Artists, he traveled to Hollywood  where he was given the role of  George Shelby in director Delmer Lord’s “Topsy and Eva”, a 1927 silent drama produced by Feature Productions. By 1928 Asther’s suave appearance placed him in leading roles; he soon played opposite such stars as Marion Davies and Joan Crawford.  

Asther appeared in director Harry Beaumont’s 1928 “Our Dancing Daughters”, a silent drama depicting the dangers of loose morals among the young. The film cast included John Mack Brown and Joan Crawford; it was this film role of Charleston-dancing, Prohibition-era drinking Diana Medford that launched Joan Crawford’s career. Asther was next given the leading role of handsome Prince de Gace, who played opposite Greta Garbo’s role of Lillie Sterling, in director Sidney Franklin’s 1929 drama “Wild Orchids”. Though often listed as a silent film, it was released as a non-talking film with orchestral score, sound effects, and title cards for dialogue. Asther had previously known Garbo in Sweden and would continue to be close friends; they appeared together in a second film of the same year, the MGM romantic drama “The Single Standard”. 

With the arrival of sound in film, Nils Asther began voice and diction lessons to minimize his Nordic accent. Due to his accent, many of his early roles in sound films were characters of foreign origins. Asther appeared with Robert Montgomery and, once again, with Joan Crawford in Clarence Brown’s 1932 drama “Letty Lynton”, which recounts the historical murder allegedly committed by nineteenth-century Glasgow socialite madeleine Smith, played by Crawford. In 1933, he was given the role of General Yen in Frank Capra’s drama war film “The Bitter Tea of General Yen”, where he  played opposite Barbara Stanwyck and, after its premiere, received good reviews for his portrayal.

After an alleged breach of contract led to a studio-based blacklist, Asther was forced to work in England between the years 1935 and 1940. He made six films in England before his return to Hollywood. Upon his return, Asther made nineteen more films before 1949; however, he was mostly given small supporting roles from which his career never returned to its former height. During the early 1950s, Asther attempted to revive his career with appearances on television which was becoming a rapidly growing phenomenon in the United States. Managing only to secure roles in a small number of minor television series, he decided in 1958 to return to Sweden. Asther had four film roles and an engagement with a local theater before 1963, at which time he retired from acting and devoted himself to painting. 

Nils Asther passed away on the 13th of October in 1981, at the age of eighty-four, at the Farsta Hospital in Stockholm. He is buried in the village of Hotagen, located in Jämtland, Sweden. Asther was inducted in 1960 into the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry; his star is located at 6705 Hollywood Boulevard. 

Asther was a gay man in a time when it was both a personal and professional social stigma. Although the film industry in the 1920s accepted gay actors with little reservation, the actors had to remain discreet about their sexual orientation. In August of 1930, Asther entered into a lavender marriage with Vivian Duncan, one of the his costars from the 1927 “Topsy and Eva”. This turbulent marriage produced one daughter and resulted, after much media discussion, in a divorce in 1932. 

Nils Asther’s memoir, “The Road of the Jester: Not a God’s Tale: A Memoir”, was published posthumously in 1988 in Stockholm. In this volume, he mentions relationships he had in the 1930s with director Mauritz Stiller and Swedish author Hjalmar Bergman. Asther also had a long-term relationship with actor and stuntman Ken DuMain, whom he met on Hollywood Boulevard in the early 1940s. 

Top Insert Image: George Hurrell, “Nils Asther”, circa 1930s, MGM Publicity Still, 25.4 x 33 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nils Asther and Greta Garbo”, 1929, MGM Publicity Shot

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nils Asther”, French Postcard by Europe, No. 909, MGM Studio Publicity Shot, Date Unknown

Fourth Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nils Asther”, Date Unknown, Publicity Shot, John Kobal Foundation, Getty Images

Bottom Insert Image: George Hurrell, “Nils Asther and Joan Crawford”, 1932, MGM Publicity Shot

James Whale: Film History Series

Photographers Unknown, I Am Rather the Fallen Angel

“Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” 

― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, 1818 

Born in Dudley, a town in the county of Worcestershire, in July of 1889, James Whale was an English actor and film and theater director, best remembered by many for his classic horror films. Known for his use of camera movement, he is credited with being the first director to use a 360-degree panning shot in a feature film.

James Whale was the sixth of seven children born to William Whale, a blast-furnace worker, and his wife Sarah, a nurse. He attended public education until his teenage years. Because the cost of his further education was prohibitive and his labor was needed to support his family, Whale took work as a cobbler. He used his early artistic ability to earn extra money by lettering signs for his neighbors; this additional income paid for classes at the Dudley School of Arts and Crafts located in the West Midlands.

In August of 1914, Whale enlisted into the Inns of Court Regiment of the British Army at the outbreak of the first world war; in July of 1916, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Worcestershire Regiment. Taken prisoner of war in August of 1917 at the battle in  Flanders, Whale was held at the Holzminden Officers’ Camp in Germany and later repatriated at the war’s end to England in December of 1918. After an unsuccessful attempt to find work as a cartoonist in Birmingham, he embarked on a professional stage career in 1919. 

James Whale worked as an actor, set designer, stage manager, and director under the tutelage of director and actor Nigel Playfair at the Lyric Theater in Hammersmith. In 1922, he met stage and costume designer Doris Zinkeisen; they were considered a couple for a period of two years despite Whale’s living as an openly gay man. In 1928, Whale was given the opportunity to direct two private performances of writer Robert Cedric Sherriff’s “Journey’s End”, a play that gave a glimpse of British infantry officers’ experiences in the trenches of France during 1918. The two lead roles were given to actors Laurence Olivier and Maurice Evans. 

The initial two performances of “Journey’s End” were well received; and the play opened in January of 1929, with actor Colin Clive now in the lead, at the Savoy Theater in London’s West End. Critically acclaimed, the play after its three-week run was then transferred to the Prince of Wales Theater in Coventry Street, where it ran for the next two years. The rights to a New York production of “Journey’s End” were acquired by Broadway producer Gilbert Miller who chose James Whale, already experienced with the play, for its director. This production of the play premiered at Henry Miller’s Theater at Broadway and West 43rd Street and ran for over a year. 

Brought to the attention of movie producers by the Broadway success of “Journey’s End”, James Whale traveled to Hollywood in 1929 and signed a contract with Paramount Pictures to be the dialogue director for the 1929 film “The Love Doctor”. After the completion of the film, Whale met David Lewis, who became his longtime romantic partner; they lived together until 1952. David Lewis would later become a prominent film producer in the 1940s and 1950s, known for producing such films as the 1939 “Dark Victory” with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart and the 1957  “Raintree County” with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor.  

In 1931, James Whale began what is probably the best known part of his career as a producer. He signed a five-year contract with Universal Studios and received his first project, the 1931 drama-war romance film “Waterloo Bridge”, which starred actress Mae Clarke, who is remembered by many for playing Jame Cagney’s girl in “The Public Enemy”. Later in 1931, Carl Laemmie, Jr, the twenty-five year old head of Universal Studios, gave Whale his choice of which studio-owned property he wanted for his next shoot; Whale chose the script for “Frankenstein”. He casted Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein and Mae Clarke as Elizabeth Frankenstein, Henry’s wife, and chose the little known Boris Karloff for the role of the Monster. Shooting ran from August 24th of 1931 to October 3rd. After premieres on October 29th of 1931, “Frankenstein” had a wide release beginning on November 21st and instantly became a hit with critics and the public.

In 1932, Whale directed two films: the drama “The Impatient Maiden” and a thriller film with Karloff and Charles Laughton entitled “The Old Dark House”, which has been credited with reinventing the “old house” genre of horror films. Whale’s 1933 film, “The Kiss Before the Mirror”, a pre-Code mystery film, received little notice and was a box-office failure. With a script approved by author H. G. Wells, Whale returned to the horror genre and produced the 1933 “The Invisible Man” which the New York Times placed in their list of best films for that year. This adaption of Well’s book, whose special effects were done in utmost secrecy, broke box-office records in cities across America.

James Whale’s next major project was the 1935 “Bride of Frankenstein”, a sequel to the original movie which he was initially reluctant to do for fear of being typecast as a horror director. The film, however, was a critical and commercial success; today it is regarded as the finest of all gothic horror movies and considered Whale’s masterpiece. Whale worked next on a comedy-mystery film entitled “Remember Last Night?” which resulted in divided reviews. After its completion, Whale started immediately on the project that had been in his mind for a long time, a film version of the stage production “Show Boat”. 

For the film version of this long-running romantic musical, Whale gathered as many members of the original show as he could; these included Paul Robeson, Helen Morgan, Sammy White, Irene Dunne, and conductor Victor Baravalle and orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett. Great care was taken by Whale to ensure a feeling of complete authenticity in the set and costume design for this film. Faithfully adapted from the original stage production, the 1936 “Show Boat” is considered the definitive film version of the musical by many critics. This film was the last of Whale’s films produced with the Laemmie family.

Jame Whale eventually retired from the film industry in 1941. Encouraged by his partner David Lewis to resume his artwork, he rediscovered his love of painting and built a studio for himself. In 1942, Whale made training films for the United States Army and created, in collaboration with actress Claire DuBrey, the theater group Brentwood Service Players. He returned to Broadway to direct the 1940 thriller “Hand in Glove” and directed his final film, a short subject entitled “Hello Out There”. Whale’s last professional engagement was the comedy play “Pagan in the Parlour”, which was forced to close early due to contract difficulties that happened during its opening tour in Europe.

While in Europe, Whale met and became infatuated with the twenty-five year old bartender Pierre Foegel. He made the decision to bring Foegel back to the United States as his chauffeur. In November of 1952 when David Lewis heard this, he ended their twenty-three year relationship, separated but still maintained a friendship. Foegel moved in with Whale in early 1953, returned for several months to France, and then in 1954  moved back permanently with Whale. In the spring of 1956, Whale suffered a small stroke, and was hospitalized several months later after suffering a second and more severe stroke. As his mental faculties were diminishing, he began to suffer from mood swings and depression. 

James Whale committed suicide, at the age of sixty-seven, by drowning himself in his Pacific Palisades swimming pool on the 29th of May in 1957. He left a suicide note to David Lewis, who withheld it from the public until his own death. Whale was cremated per his request and his ashes were interred in the Columbarium of Memory at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. When David Lewis died in 1987, James Curtis, as his executor, had Lewis’s  ashes interred in a niche across from Whale’s internment site. James Curtis would later write the definitive biography of Whale, “James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters”, published in 2003.

Note: James Whale lived as an openly gay man throughout his career in the British theater and in Hollywood, which was virtually unheard of in that era. While he did not go out of his way to publicize his homosexuality, he made no effort to conceal it either.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “James Whale” (Profile), circa 1930, Cream-Toned Vintage Print, 23.7 x 18 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

Second Insert Image: Arthur Edeson, “Colin Clive and Boris Karloff”, 1931, Film Shot from “Frankenstein”, Director James Whale, Universal Pictures

Third Insert Image; Arthur Edeson, “Claude Rains and Gloria Stuart”, 1933, Film Shot from “The Invisible Man”, Director James Whale, Universal Pictures

Fourth Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “James Whale”, Date Unknown, Studio Photo Shoot, Universal Pictures

Fifth Insert Image: John J. Mescall, “Paul Robeson, Irene Dunne, Hattie McDaniel, and Helen Morgan”, 1936, Film Shot from “Showboat”, Director James Whale, Universal Pictures

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “James Whale”, circa 1930, Cream-Toned Vintage Print, 23.7 x 18 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC