Tag: since you went away

Jackie Moran: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Jackie Moran”, circa 1940s, Vintage Promotion Shot, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, Private Collection

Born in Mattoon, Illinois in January of 1923, John Edward Moran was an American film actor who is credited for roles in thirty-seven films. He is known primarily for his roles in youth-oriented films, particularly the roles of Huckleberry Finn and Buck Rogers’s sidekick Buddy Wade.

Discovered by actress and film producer Mary Pickford, Moran was taken by his mother to Hollywood, California for a 1935 screen test. Initially signed to Columbia Pictures, he was given the screen name of Jackie Moran and was cast in a significant number of supporting film roles. At the age of thirteen, he appeared in three 1936 films: the debut role of Tommy Blake in Elliott Nugent’s romantic comedy “And So They Were Married”, the uncredited role of Duckfoot in director Eric C. Kenton’s crime film “Counterfeit”, and the role of young Paul Darnley in Wesley Ruggles’s drama “Valiant is the Word for Carrie”. 

After appearing in “Outcast” and “Michael O’Halloran” in 1937, Jackie Moran played the co-star role of Huckleberry Finn in David O. Selznick’s 1938 Technicolor “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” with actor Tommy Kelly as Tom. Moran received critical praise for his natural acting skills and went on to star in several films produced by Republic and Monogram studios. In 1939, he had a role in Joseph Santley’s 1939 drama “The Spirit of Culver” where he acted alongside fellow child actors Jackie Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew. 

Cast in a cameo role for the 1939 “Gone With the Wind”, Moran played Doctor Meade’s son who, furious at his brother’s death in the war, enlists in the Confederate Army to seek revenge. Moran was next signed by Universal Pictures to play the role of Buddy Wade in its 1939 science fiction film “Buck Rogers”, a serial based on the original 1928 magazine stories and comic strip. The twelve-part serial starred Larry (Buster) Crabbe as Buck Rogers who, assisted by his sidekick Buddy, fights the evil dictator Killer Kane. The role of Kane was played by character actor Anthony Warde known for his portrayal of unsavory henchmen. Produced on a limited budget, this serial saved money on special effects by using sets and background shots from previous science fiction movies.

In eleven of his films, Jackie Moran was teamed up with child star Marcia Mae Jones, who initially co-starred with him in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” as Tom Sawyer’s cousin Mary. They also appeared in supporting roles for Deanna Durban’s 1938 musical “Mad About Music”, an exclusive boarding school film which went on to receive four Academy Award nominations. Robert F. McGowan, known for his “Our Gang” comedy shorts, cast Moran and Jones as the stars in four Monogram Studio productions that idealized life in pre-World War II America. These were the 1938 adventure film “Barefoot Boy” and a trio of films in 1940: the school dance film “Tomboy”, the mystery film “Haunted House” and the drama “The Old Swimmin’ Hole”. 

Moran continued to act in films during the years of World War II. His last major production was in David O. Selznick’s  1944 epic drama film “Since You Went Away”, an Oscar nominee for Best Picture in which Moran played a grocer’s son opposite Shirley Temple. In 1945 to 1946 near the end of his film career,  he played in a collection of teenage musical comedies produced by Columbia and Monogram studios. Among these were a lead role in the comedy-mystery “There Goes Kelly” and co-starring roles in Columbia’s “Let’s Go Steady” and Monogram’s “High School Hero”. Moran’s final film role was in Columbia’s 1946 college drama “Betty Co-Ed”.  

Little is known of Jackie Moran’s remaining forty-four years outside of what was stated by his lawyer Robert Doyle and other acquaintances in obituaries. In the 1950s, he became a script writer for secondary movies. A scriptwriter named John E. Moran produced four scripts in the 1960s for American film director and producer Russ Meyer who was known for his successful series of campy sexploitation movies. These film scripts included “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”, “Good Morning and. . .Goodbye!”, “Common Law”, and “Wild Gals of the Naked West”. In the last two films, John E. Moran was credited with small roles. 

In his later years, Moran worked in public relations for the Roman Catholic Diocese in Chicago. He relocated in 1984 to the historic town of Greenfield, Massachusetts where he wrote a novel entitled “Six Step House”. On the twentieth of September in 1990, Jackie Moran succumbed to lung cancer at the age of sixty-seven in Greenfield’s Franklin Medical Center. After a private funeral, Jackie Moran’s ashes were scattered, as requested in his will, on the backstretch of the Del Mar Racetrack, a thoroughbred horse racing facility in Del Mar, California.

Note: For those interested, the entire Universal Studios’s 1939 “Buck Rogers” serial can be found, courtesy of ComicWeb Serial Cliffhanger Theater, at the DailyMotion website located at: https://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x4qzsf

Film Gifs of the opening credits of Chapter One of the Buck Rogers serial can be found in this site’s article entitled “Buck Rogers: Tomorrow’s World”.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Jackie Moran as Huckleberry Finn”, 1938, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, Director David O. Selznik, Cinematographer James Wong Howe

Second Insert Image: Cinematographer Jerome Ash, “Jackie Moran and Buster Crabbe”, 1939, Film Shot from “Buck Rogers” Serial Film, Director Ford Beebe and Saul Goodkind

Third Insert Image: Movie Poster, “The Old Swimmin’ Hole”, 1940, Jackie Moran and Marcia Mae Jones, Director Robert F. McGowan, Cinematographer Harry Neumann

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Jackie Moran”, Date Unknown, Original 35mm Color Transparency, Private Collection

Guy Madison: Film History Series

Guy Madison (Sailor Harold E. Smith), “Since You Went Away”, 1944,  Selznick International Pictures

Born in Pumpkin Center, California in January of 1922, Robert Ozell Moseley was an American film, television and radio actor. He was one of five children born to a machinist father and raised in Bakersfield, California. Moseley attended the city’s junior college where he majored in animal husbandry, he worked briefly as a telephone linesman in California before joining the Coast Guard in 1942.

In Hollywood on a liberty pass in 1944, Moseley attended a Lux Radio Theater broadcast where he was noticed by a talent scout and brought to the offices of Selznick International Pictures. David Selznick signed Moseley to a contract and gave him several screen tests and his first film role. Moseley appeared as a lonely sailor in a three-minute bowling alley sequence with film stars Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker in the 1944 “Since You Went Away”. He filmed his screen time on a weekend pass under the name Guy Madison, a screen name composed by David Selznick and his assistant Henry Wilson. 

“Since You Went Away” was set in an American town where families dealt with loved ones fighting in the Second World War and the effects of that war at home. The cinematography was produced by Stanley Cortez, who would film Charles Laughton’s “Night of the Hunter”, Lee Garmes, an Academy Award winner for “Shanghai Express”, and George Barnes, Academy Award winner for “Rebecca”, and documentary producer Robert Bruce, the last two being in uncredited roles. The film was a success and generated thousands of fan letters for Guy Madison in his role as a lonely sailor. 

Guy Madison, after his discharge from military service, was cast in several roles by Selznick. He appeared in leading roles in the 1946 drama film “Till the End of Time”, co-starring with Dorothy McGuire, Bill Williams and Robert Mitchum, and the 1947 comedy film “Honeymoon”, co-starring with Shirley Temple and Franchot Tone. Madison’s early acting roles in these films was judged by critics to be amateurish and, by the end of the 1940s, he was no longer getting roles. Along with most of the Selznick International’s contract-players during this period, Madison was eventually released from his contract. 

Despite the bad reviews, Madison studied and started perfecting his art in the theater.His fortune changed when he was given the role of James Butler Hickok in the television series “The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok”, which ran from 1951 to 1958 and on the radio from 1951 to 1956. His co-star in the series was Andy Devine, a character actor well known for his distinctive raspy voice, who played the role of  the trusty sidekick Jingles. This popular series was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1956 for Best Western or Adventure Series.

Guy Madison’s popularity as Hickok led to a starring role in the 1953 western film “The Charge at Feather River”, a role which gave him a new start as an action hero, albeit mostly in western films. Films which followed include the 1954 Western calvary film “The Command”; the 1955 robbery film “Five Against the House”; “The Beast of Hollow Mountain”, a 1956 horror western with a prehistoric beast; the 1956 science fiction drama “On the Threshold of Space”; the 1957 western drama“The Hard Man”; and “Bullwhip”, a 1958 western film in which Madison co-starred with Rhonda Fleming. 

In the 1960s, Madison traveled through Europe and made several costume dramas, German adventure films and Italian westerns. Among his many European films are such films as the 1965 film “Das Vermächtnis des Inka (The Legacy of the Incas)”, the 1966 “I Cinque della Vndette (Five for Revenge)”, and the 1968 “I Lunghi Giorni dell’Odio (Long Days of Hate)”. In the 1970s, Madison returned to the United States and appeared in mainly cameo roles in film and television. In 1988, he appeared in a television remake of the western classic “Red River” along with western stars James Arness, Robert Horton and John Lupton. Madison’s role as rancher Bill Meeker became his final film role.

In his later years, Guy Madison’s work was greatly limited by physical aliments and the onset of emphysema. He eventually retired to a large ranch home he designed in Morongo Valley, California. Madison died at the age of seventy-four in February of 1996 at the Desert Hospital Hospice in Palm Springs, California. He was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cathedral City, California. 

Guy Madison, in addition to all his appearances on many television shows, appeared in over fifty films in his career. In 1954, he was awarded a special Golden Globe Award for Best Western Star and, in 1986, was awarded a Golden Boot Award given in recognition of his contributions to the genre of westerns in television and film. Madison has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for his work in radio and one for his television contributions. He also has a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in California.

Note: Character actor Andy Devine acted in many western films. One of his most notable roles was as Cookie, the sidekick in ten Roy Rogers feature films. He also appeared in several films with John Wayne, including “Stagecoach” in 1939, the 1953 “Island in the Sky”, and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” released in 1962. Devine appeared extensively in radio including seventy-five appearances on Jack Benny’s radio show between 1936 and 1942. He was also the host for “Andy’s Gang”, a children’s television show hosted on NBC during the later half of the 1950s. Devine has a star of honor on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Guy Madison”, Studio Photo for “The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok”, circa 1951-1958

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Guy Madison and Andy Devine”, Studio Photo for “The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok”, circa 1951-1958

Fourth Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Guy Madison and Robert Mitchum”, Publicity Photo for “Till the End of Time”, 1945-1946