Tag: television history

Robert Reed: Film History Series

Amos Carr, “Robert Reed”, circa 1955-1960, Gelatin Silver Print, Collection of Jan Green

Born at Highland Park, Illinois in October of 1932, Robert Reed was an American film and television actor who is best known for his role as the patriarch in American Broadcast Company’s 1969 sitcom “The Brady Bunch”. A three-time Primetime Emmy nominee for his television work, Reed was also a stage actor who performed in Shakespearean productions.

Robert Reed, birth name John Robert Rietz  Jr, was the only child of Helen Teaverbaugh and John Robert Rietz, a government employee who was stationed throughout the Mid-West. Reed received his elementary education in Des Plaines, Illinois until 1939 at which time the family moved to Navasota, Texas. The family relocated twice more before settling in Muskogee, Oklahoma where Reed’s father worked at a turkey and cattle farm. Reed was a member of the local 4-H agricultural club and exhibited the calves he had raised; however, his primary interests laid in music and theater.

While attending Muskogee’s Central High School, Reed participated in its theater productions; he also worked as a radio announcer at local radio stations for which he wrote and produced dramas. Enrolled in 1950 as a drama student at Northwestern University, Reed appeared as a lead character in eight plays, several of which where under the direction of the university’s celebrated drama coach Alvina Krause. After graduating, he traveled to London where he studied for a term at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Reed returned to the United States and performed in summer stock productions in Pennsylvania and later joined New York City’s off-broadway ensemble “The Shakespeare-wrights” and Chicago’s Studebaker Theater Company. 

In the late 1950’s, Robert Reed moved to Los Angeles to continue his acting career. His first guest-appearance in an 1959 episode of the television family comedy “Father Knows Best” led to guest roles on the sci-fi series “Men into Space” and the western series “Lawman”. Reed’s first credited film role was Johnny Randall in director Ralph Brooke’s 1961 horror thriller “Bloodlust!” for Crown International Pictures. His first starring television role was defense lawyer Kenneth Preston, playing alongside actor E. G. Marshall, in the CBS popular courtroom drama “The Defenders”, a twenty-two time nominee for the Primetime Emmy Awards and winner of two Outstanding Drama Series Awards. 

While filming “The Defenders” in its 1964 third-season, Reed made his Broadway stage debut in the role of Paul Bratter, replacing Robert Redford, in Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park”. In 1968, he performed in the Booth Theater production of playwright Samuel Taylor’s comedy “Avanti!” and appeared in director Robert Wise’s biographical musical “Star!”, which starred Julie Andrews as the British performer Gertrude Lawrence. In the latter part of the 1960s, Reed had guest roles in such series as the sitcom “Family Affair”, the detective shows “Ironside” and “The Mod Squad”, and episodes of the anthology series “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater”. 

Due to his successful performances in “Barefoot in the Park”, Robert Reed was signed in 1968 to both Paramount Pictures and the American Broadcast Company (ABC). Paramount gave him the lead role as the patriarch Mike Brady in series’ creator Sherwood Schwartz’s new sitcom “The Brady Bunch”, a family comedy in which a widowed man with three boys marries a woman with three girls. This five-season series starred Florence Henderson as Carol Brady, the wife, and comedic actress Ann Bradford Davis as the maid Alice Nelson. A favorite series of the 1970s, “The Brady Bunch” went into syndication and spawned several other series, two television reunion films, and two parody films. 

Throughout the production of “The Brady Bunch”, Reed was not excited about the role. He often felt that the show was beneath his level of training as a serious Shakespearean actor. Reed frequently made suggestions in an effort to make the sitcom more realistic; however, most of these were ignored. Occasionally Schwartz, now executive producer, would allow Reed to direct an episode in order to relieve the tension between them. Schwartz eventually decided to replace Reed for the sixth season of the series but the show was canceled before production. Despite his problems with Schwartz, Reed became friends with his co-stars Florence Henderson and Susan Olsen who played Carol Brady’s daughter, Cindy. 

Robert Reed, while filming “The Brady Bunch”, also had a recurring role of Lieutenant Adam Tobias on the Columbia Broadcasting Company’s detective television series “Mannix” which starred Mike Connors. He appeared in three to five shows on each of the eight “Mannix” seasons. Beginning in 1974, Reed made guest star appearances on series and movies produced for television. His 1975 role as doctor Pat Caddison, who eventually disclosed an identity as transgender in a two-part episode of “Medical Center”, earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Reed also appeared in the 1975 “Secret Night Caller”; the 1976 “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble” and “Rich Man, Poor Man”; and the 1977 miniseries “Roots”, among others. 

Reed returned to the character of Mike Brady for several spin-offs and sequels throughout his remaining career. This included the 1976 variety show “The Brady Bunch Hour” which allowed him opportunity to sing and dance; the 1988 television film “A Very Brady Christmas”; the 1989 episode, entitled “A Very Brady Episode”, for the NBC sitcom “Day by Day”; and finally the 1990 short-lived drama series “The Bradys”. Reed’s last onscreen appearance was the April 1992 episode “Ain’t Misbehavin’” for the CBS crime drama “Jake and the Fatman” which starred William Conrad.  

In the last years of his life, Robert Reed taught classes on Shakespeare at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also performed alongside actress Betsy Palmer on the touring stage production of Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr.’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist “Love Letters”. Tested positive for HIV, Robert Reed passed away from a rare form of colorectal cancer at the age of fifty-nine in Pasadena, California in May of 1992. He is interred at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, Illinois. 

Notes: Robert Reed was married for five years to fellow Northwestern University student Marilyn Rosenberger. Before the divorce in 1959, they had one child, a daughter Karen Rietz. Reed kept the fact that he was gay a close secret, as public knowledge of his sexual orientation would have damaged his career and caused the demise of “The Brady Bunch” show. Several years after his death, Reed’s “Brady Bunch” co-stars, notably Florence Henderson and Barry Williams who had the role of Greg Brady, confirmed Reed’s sexual orientation and revealed that the entire cast and crew of “The Brady Bunch” had been aware of it at the time of production.

Northwestern University drama coach Alvina Krause was the life-long partner of Bloomsburg State College physical education teacher Lucy McCammon. After her retirement as Professor Emeritus in 1963, Krause gave private instruction for master-drama classes as late as 1977. She moved to Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania in 1971, where she shared a house with McCammon. Beginning in 1978, Krause was the artistic advisor, and later the artistic director, of the Bloomsburg Theater Ensemble founded by her former master-class students. Alvina Krause passed away on the 31st of December in 1981 at the age of eighty-eight; her partner Lucy McCammon passed on the 19th of December in the same year.

A short biography of Robert Reed can be found at the Oklahoma Historical Society site located at: https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=RE041

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Robert Reed in Barefoot in the Park”, Gelatin Silver Print, New York Public Library

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Robert Reed”, circa 1950s, Gelatin Silver Print, Collection of Jan Green

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Robert Reed”, Date Unknown, Autographed Studio Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed”, 1961, “The Defenders” Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print, CBS Television

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Robert Reed”, 1990, CBS Television Promotion Photo, Gelatin Silver Print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, 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 

Martin Kosleck: Film History Series

Herbert Irving Leeds, “Martin Kosleck as Heller”, 1942, Film Clip Photo,“Manila Calling”, Cinematography Lucien N. Andriot, 20th Century Fox

Born in March of 1904 in Barkotzen, now Poland’s Barkocin, Martin Kosleck was a German film actor who began his career during the silent film era. He appeared in more than fifty films and numerous episodes of television series, as well as, roles on the Broadway stage. A talented artist, Kosleck supported himself between film roles as an impressionist-styled portrait painter whose work included portraits of Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Bette Davis. He had a solo exhibition of his portraits and other works in 1935 at the Los Angeles Museum that received great reviews. 

Born Nicolale Yoshkin to a forester of German-Russian and Jewish lineage, Kosleck studied for six years at the Max Reinhardt Dramatic School located at the Palais Wesendonck in  Berlin Tiergarten. His forte was Shakespearian roles, however, he also appeared in musicals and revues at both German and English theaters. At the age of twenty-three, Kosleck had his film debut in International Film AG’s 1927 “Der Fahnenträger von Sedan”, a silent film by Austrian director Johannes Brandt. Three years later, he appeared in director Carmine Gallone’s musical “Die Singende Stadt (The Singing City)” and Richard Oswald’s sci-fi horror film “Alrune”, both sound films.

In the early 1930s, Kosleck met and began a relationship with the actor Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, already an established artist in Weimar Germany’s film industry and close friend of Marlene Dietrich. This sometimes turbulent relationship would last until Twardowski’s death from a heart attack in 1958. During their early time together, the National Socialist Party under Adolph Hitler was growing in power. Kosleck, an outspoken critic of the Party, soon earned the animosity of the newly established Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels. 

Martin Kosleck, after learning he had been tried in absentia and sentenced to death, escaped to Britain in 1931. The following year, he arrived in New York City and performed on Broadway in “The Merchant of Venice”. This play featured the return to acting, after an absence of thirteen years, of Maude Adams who at that time was the most popular stage actress in America. Kosleck’s role in this play was noticed by director Anatole Litvak who signed him with the Warner Brothers Studio; his first role was in directors William Dieterie and Busby Berkeley’s musical comedy “Fashions of 1934”. 

Hans Twardowski also left Germany in 1931 after finishing his role in Viktor Tourjansky’s “Der Herzog von Reichstadt”. He traveled to the west coast of the United States and first appeared in Universal Studio’s 1932 pre-Code drama “Scandal for Sale”. Twardowski appeared in several war films with Kosleck, including “Confessions of a Nazi Spy”, “Espionage Agent” and “The Hitler Gang”. His acting career ended along with the war; however, he continued to write, direct and act in stage plays. A talented singer, he also sang tenor in a number of musicals. 

In 1934, Kosleck was given a small role playing Propaganda Minister Goebbels in the highly controversial Warner Brothers’s drama “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” based on a book by FBI agent Leon Turron who had uncovered Nazi operations in the United States. Kosleck, inspired by his deep hatred of the Nazis, portrayed Goebbels with an icy demeanor and piercing sinister stare, a performance that made Kosleck the directors’ choice for roles depicting both criminals and Nazi villains. Between 1939 and 1944, he appeared as the bad guy in a total of twenty-two war films and crime thrillers that include “Espionage Agent”, “Nick Carter, Master Detective”, “Calling Philo Vance”, “Nazi Agent”, and Paramount Studios’s “The Hitler Gang”, the second of his three roles as Goebbels.

After the end of the Second World War, Martin Kosleck continued his work at Universal Studios with appearances in several horror films. The first of which was the role of Ragheb, the Arkam sect disciple, in the 1944 “The Mummy’s Curse”. This film was Universal’s fifth entry in its “Mummy” franchise as well as Lon Chaney Jr’s final appearance as the mummy Kharis. In 1945, Kosleck again co-starred with Chaney as the disturbed plastic surgeon Dr. Rudi Polden in “The Frozen Ghost”. He was in two Universal films in 1946: a supporting role in “She-Wolf of London” which starred June Lockhart who had just finished filming “Son of Lassie”, and “House of Horrors”, a film which contains one of Kosleck’s best horror film roles, the obsessed sculptor Marcel de Lange who controls the mad killer known as “The Creeper”.

In 1947 Kosleck unexpectedly married the German actress Eleonora van Mendelssohn. Born to an elite banking family in Berlin, she was both a sensitive and vulnerable woman who had married four times and, after an abortion, initially used morphine as a sedative but soon became addicted. With less film roles offered, Kosleck returned with his wife to New York city where he appeared on Broadway in Jean Giraudoux’s “La Folle de Chaillot”, a production starring John Carradine and Tony Award winner Martita Hunt, that was recognized as one of the best plays of 1948-1949. Kosleck also had an extensive career in television with appearances on such shows as “Hallmark Hall of Fame”, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, “The Outer Limits”, “The F.B.I.”, “Mission Impossible” and “Studio One”, among others. 

Martin Kosleck’s last screen appearance was as Horst Borsht in Robert Day’s 1980 detective comedy “The Man with Bogart’s Face”. This film is also noted for being the last film appearance of George Raft. Martin Kosleck died at the age of eighty-nine following abdominal surgery at a Santa Monica convalescent home in Los Angeles County. His body was cremated; the location of his ashes are unknown.

Notes: Eleonora von Mendelssohn, already a fragile person, had taken the role of caregiver for both her hospitalized gay brother Francesco who had suffered a stroke and Kosleck who had attempted suicide over a love affair dispute. In January of 1951, Eleonora committed suicide with a toxic cocktail of ether, pills and injections. Her body was discovered by Hans Twardowski. To better understand the tragic life of Eleonora von Mendelssohn, I suggest reading the biographical article located at The Mendelssohn Society website: https://www.mendelssohn-gesellschaft.de/en/mendelssohns/biografien/eleonora-von-mendelssohn

A complete list of Martin Kosleck’s films and television appearances can be found at the Swiss film site Cyranos located at: https://www.cyranos.ch/smkosl-e.htm

An article entitled “The Cult of Actor Martin Kosleck in The Flesh Eaters” contains information on Kosleck’s work with Universal Studios. It can be found on the Cult Film Alley website located at: https://cultfilmalley.com.au/2022/05/12/the-cult-of-actor-martin-kosleck-in-the-flesh-eaters-1964/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Martin Kosleck”, Studio Publicity Film Shot, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Eugene Fords, “Berlin Correspondent”, (Virginia Gilmore, Sig Ruman, Martin Kosleck), 1942, Cinematography Virgil Miller, 20th Century Fox

Third Insert Image: Tim Whelan, “The Mad Doctor”, (Martin Kosleck and Basil Rathbone), 1941, Cinematography Ted Tetzlaff, Paramount Pictures

Fourth Insert Image: Leslie Goodwins, “The Mummy’s Curse”, (Peter Coe, Martin Kosleck, Kay Harding), 1944, Cinematography Virgil Miller, Universal Studios

Bottom Insert Image: Jean Yarbrough, “House of Horrors”, (Rondo Hatton and Martin Kosleck), 1946, Cinematography Maury Gertsman, Universal Studios

 

Jack Edward Larson: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Jack Larson as Jimmy Olsen”, circa 1950s, Studio Publicity Photo, “Adventures of Superman”, Warner Brothers / International Movie Data Base 

Born in Los Angeles, California in February of 1928, Jack Edward Larson was an American actor, screenwriter, producer and librettist; he wrote the libretto to American composer Virgil Thomson’s 1972 three-act opera “Lord Byron”. Larson’s acting career spanned a period of sixty years, during which he appeared in both film and television productions.

The son of George Larson and Anita Calicoff, Jack Larson was raised in Pasedena, California, and attended its Junior College. Encouraged by his teachers to study the works of Shakespeare, he began writing and directing plays at the college. Larson’s productions caught the attention of a talent scout from the Warner Brothers film studio. After signing with Warner Brothers, he was given his first role, as Lieutenant ‘Shorty’ Kirk, in director Raoul Walsh’s 1947 aviation film “Fighter Squadron”. Three uncredited roles followed: the boy role in R. G. Springsteen’s 1949 drama “Flame of Youth”; the role of Dusty in Philip Ford’s 1950 western “Redwood Forest Trail”; and the role of Tommy in Ford’s mystery film of the same year “Trial Without Jury”.

In early 1951, Larson was presented with the film role of an energetic but naive young reporter. Encouraged by his agent, he agreed to portray Jimmy Olsen in Robert L. Lippert’s black and white film “ Superman and the Mole Men”. This film, shot in the month of July, served as the pilot for the “Adventures of Superman” television series. The initial filming and production for the first season was accomplished in August/September of 1951. There were one hundred-four episodes in the series which was filmed in black and white until 1954 after which it was filmed in color until the series’ end in April of 1958. While Larson’s character of Jimmy Olsen gave him wide recognition, it also limited his development as an actor by typecasting him in his future roles.

During his film work on “Adventures of Superman”, Jack Larson continued to appear, both credited and uncredited, in fourteen films produced through different production companies. Among these were Joseph Kane’s 1951 adventure film for Republic Pictures “Fighting Coast Guard”; Harry Levin’s 1952 family comedy “Belles on Their Toes” for 20th Century Fox; Thomas Carr’s 1953 western for Allied Artists “Star of Texas”; and John H. Auer’s 1957 drama for Warner Brothers “Johnny Trouble” which starred Ethel Barrymore in her final role.

Larson made cameo appearances in two films of the Superman series. He played a train passenger in Richard Donner’s 1978 “Superman”. In Bryan Singer’s 2006 “Superman Returns”, Larson was given the role of Bo, the Metropolis bartender and loyal friend of Superman. In addition to his film roles, Larson also acted in several television series: the 1955 “Navy Log” with roles in four episodes; “The Millionaire” in 1960; “Gomer Pyle” in 1965; “Superboy” in 1991; “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” in 1996 as old Jimmy Olsen; and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” in 2010.

Jack Larson was a longtime friend of Gore Vidal whom he first met in 1954 at a Santa Monica party. His social circle included other literary figures such as Christopher Isherwood and expatriate writer and composer Paul Bowles, author of “The Sheltering Sky”. In 1958, Larson met his life partner, the director and screenwriter James Bridges. Listed among Bridges’s many films are “The Paper Chase”, “Urban Cowboy” and “The China Syndrome”. Larson and Bridges resided together at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed George Sturges House in Brentwood, Los Angeles, until Bridge’s death in June of 1993.

Prior to his meeting Bridges, Larson had been the companion of actor Montgomery Clift. When Larson was feeling typecast by his Jimmy Olsen character, it was Clift who advised him to stop putting himself in those casting positions, advice which Larson followed by writing plays and librettos. Due to his long association with Clift, Larson was interviewed extensively for the 2018 biographical documentary “Making Montgomery Clift”. Directed by Hillary Demmon and Montgomery Clift’s nephew Robert Clift, the film presented a different side to Montgomery Clift’s life than previous biographies. Told through interviews with family and friends, it presented Clift as a man who enjoyed life and was comfortable with himself as a gay man. 

Jack Larson died on September 20th in 2015 at the age of eighty-seven. On both plays and films, he had often collaborated with his longtime partner, James Bridges. Larson’s interment was at the Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California. 

Notes: As part of its “The Interviews: Twenty Five Years” series, the Television Academy has a two-chapter video interview with Jack Larson on its site. I highly recommend this interview; click on full interview to see the lissted sections. The interview can be located at: https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/jack-larson#interview-clips

Top Insert Image: William Claxton, “Jack Larson”, Jack Larson and James Bridges Photo Shoot, 26.7 x 34.3 cm, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Second Insert Photo: Photographer Unknown, “Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen) and Steve Reeves (Clark Kent)”, circa 1950s, “Adventures of Superman”, Film Clip Photo, Everett Collection

Third Insert Photo: William Claxton, “Jack Larson”, Jack Larson and James Bridges Photo Shoot, 26.7 x 34.3 cm, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Photo: William Claxton, “Jack Larson and Jame Bridges”, Photo Shoot, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

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

 

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

Tom Tyron: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Tom Tyron”, Date Unknown, Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Born in Hartford, Connecticut in January of 1928, Thomas Lester Tyron was an American actor and novelist. He grew up in Wethersfield and, in 1943 at the age of seventeen, enlisted in the U.S. Navy where he spent three years as a radio operator in the South Pacific. After his discharge from service in 1946, Tyron joined the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts where he was employed as a set designer and assistant stage manager. He also studied at Yale University and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. 

Encouraged by actress Gertrude Lawrence and her husband, producer Richard Aldrich, Tyron entered into acting. His first appearance on New York City’s Broadway was a role in Arthur Kober and Joshua Logan’s 1952 musical “Wish You Were Here”. In 1953, Tyron was in two productions on Broadway, “Cyrano de Bergerac” and Shakespeare’s “Richard III”. His television appearances at this time include an episode of the 1955 daytime drama series “The Way of the World” and the two-part episode “King of the Dakotas” as a guest-star of NBC’s Western series “Frontier”.

Tom Tyron moved to Hollywood in 1955 and was given a contract by Paramount Studios. In his film debut for the studio, he was given second-billing in Michael Curtiz’s 1956 crime drama “The Scarlet Hour” which starred actress Carol Ohmart. Lent to Allied Artists, Tyron was given the lead role as Private Mason in Charles F. Haas’s 1956 World War II film “Screaming Eagles”. In the same year, he appeared in a supporting role acting opposite Charlton Heston and Anne Baxter in Paramount’s Western film “Three Violent People”, directed by Rudolph Maté. In 1958, Tyron had the starring role as husband/alien Bill Farrell in Gene Fowler’s horror science fiction film “I Married a Monster from Outer Space”, now a cult classic.

Most of Tyron’s acting was in the medium of television with appearances in episodes of popular drama and Western series. These included Playhouse 90, Zane Grey Theater, Lux Video Theater, Jane Wyman’s Fireside Theater, Studio 57, Wagon Train, The Big Valley, The Millionaire, and The Twentieth-Century Fox Hour. Tyron’s longest running role in television was as Texas John Slaughter in the Disney series of movies of the same name which ran from 1958 to 1961. The “Jack Slaughter” series was based on the historical American lawman John Horton Slaughter. Born in 1841, Slaughter was a cowboy, poker player and sheriff who earned a reputation fighting outlaws and hostiles in the Arizona and New Mexico territories. 

Tom Tyron appeared in several films for Twentieth-Century Fox; the first of which was a starring role as Mahlon, a brother of Ruth, in Henry Koster’s  1960 biblical CinemaScope film “The Story of Ruth”. In 1961, he had a starring role as Private first class Roth in Raoul Walsh’s Korean War film “Marines, Let’s Go”. Tom Tyron appeared in two films in 1962: the Disney space-age satire “Moon Pilot”, in which he starred alongside Brian Keith, Edmond O’Brien and Tommy Kirk, and Fox Studio’s epic black and white war-drama “The Longest Day” which featured a large international ensemble cast.

Tyron’s most notable starring role was as the ambitious Catholic priest, Stephen Fenmoyle, in Otto Preminger’s 1963 drama film “The Cardinal”, based on the 1950 novel of the same name. Shown through a series of memory flashbacks during the Cardinal’s formal ceremony of institution, the film was shot in multiple locations and touched on issues of interfaith marriage, racial bigotry, sex outside of marriage and the rise of fascism. “The Cardinal” was the highest-grossing film of 1963 and won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama. Tom Tyron received a nomination for the Golden Globe Best Actor in a Drama.

Tom Tyron followed this success with appearances in two more films: a supporting role in the 1958 epic war film directed by Preminger “In Harm’s Way” and a leading role in Arnold Levin’s 1965 calvary Western “The Glory Guys”, with a screenplay written by Sam Peckinpah. Tyron appeared in several television performances in the late 1960s including a live television performance of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the 1967 television movie remake of  “Winchester ’73”, and episodes of The Big Valley and Bob Hope’s Chrysler Theater.

Disillusioned with acting, Tyron retired from the profession in 1969 and, inspired after seeing “Rosemary’s Baby” in the theater, began to successfully write mystery and horror novels. His best known work is the 1971 psychological horror novel “The Other”, a story of a boy whose evil twin-brother might be responsible for a 1930s’ series of deaths. Tyron adapted the novel into a film of the same name that was released in 1972.  The film was directed by Robert Mulligan and shot entirely on location in California; actor John Ritter made one of his early film appearances in the role of Rider. Tyron’s 1973 folk-horror novel “Harvest Home”, a story of dark pagan rituals in a small New England town, was adapted into a television mini-series “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home” which starred Bette Davis. 

Tom Tyron wrote “Crowned Heads”, a collection of novellas inspired by the legends of Hollywood. The first in the series was the novella “Fedora”, a story of the relationship between a reclusive former actress and her plastic surgeon. This tale was adapted by Billy Wilder for his 1978 German-French drama film “Fedora” which starred William Holden and Marthe Keller, best known for her role in “Marathon Man”. Tyron wrote two more novels: the 1989 “The Night of the Moonbow”, the story of a harassed boy at summer camp who turns to violence, and the 1991 “Night Magic”, the story of a NYC street magician who is offered real magic. “Night Magic” was published posthumously in 1995.

Starting in 1955, Tyron was in a brief marriage to Ann L. Noyes, the daughter of a stockbroker; the couple divorced three years later in 1958. During the 1970s, he was in a romantic relationship with Clive Clerk, an interior designer, television actor, and one of the original cast members of the Broadway hit “A Chorus Line”. They lived together in a Tyron’s apartment at Central Park West in New York City. From 1973 to 1977, Tyron was in a relationship with John Calvin Culver, a Broadway revival stage actor. Culver also performed in pornographic films under the name of Casey Donovan. The relationship ended as Tyron was deeply closeted and grew increasingly disturbed by Donovan’s notoriety.

An actor with appearances in eighteen films and numerous television series, Tom Tyron passed away in September of 1991 at the age of sixty-five in Los Angeles, California. The announced cause of death was stomach cancer; however, Tyron’s literary agent, G. Thomas Holloway, later stated the stomach cancer was related to Tyron’s HIV-positive status. At the time of his death, Tyron had asked to keep this information private as he did not want his readers or relatives to know.

Second Insert Image: Arthur E. Arling, “Tom Tyron and Elana Eden”, 1960, Publicity Shot for “The Story of Ruth”, Director Henry Koster, Gelatin Silver Print

Third Insert Image: NBCU Photo Bank, “Tom Tyron as Lin McAdam”, “Winchester ’73”, 1967, Publicity Film Shot, Gelatin Silver Print

Fourth Insert Image: Jean Bourgoin and Walter Wottitz, “Tom Tyron”, 1962, Film Shot “The Longest Day”, Directors ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki

William ‘Billy’ Halop: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Billy Halop”, Studio Shoot for “Dead End”, 1937, Director William Wyler, Cinematographer Gregg Toland

Born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City in February of 1920, William (Billy) Halop was an American actor who, while in his mid-teens, achieved fame in the 1930s as the leader of the Dead End Kids in the Broadway stage and movie versions of Sidney Kingsley’s drama “Dead End”.

William Halop was one of three children born to Benjamin Cohen Halop and Lucille Elizabeth Halop, a theatrical dancer. In 1933 at the age of thirteen, he was given the lead role as Bobby Benson in the popular radio show “The H-Bar-O Rangers”, a juvenile Western adventure radio program that was broadcasted on the CBS network. For three years beginning in 1934, Halop starred as Dick Kent, the son of Fred and Lucy Kent, in the radio series “Home Sweet Home”.

Halop was already a successful radio actor when he began studying at New York City’s Professional Children’s School, a preparatory school for working and aspiring child actors and dancers. He and five other boys were chosen to appear as the poverty-stricken juvenile delinquents in Kingsley’s 1935 play “Dead End”. Halop played the role of Tommy, a tough street-wise fugitive from a reform school, who was the brother of the play’s heroine Drina Gordon. The six boys were the favorite actors in the play; the Broadway audience was both shocked and amused by the vile gutter language spoken in the play.

With the success of the production, William Halop and his fellow actors were signed to two-year film contracts with Hollywood producer Samual Goldwyn for United Artists and became known as the Dead End Kids. In his first film appearance, Halop appeared as the character Tommy in the 1937 film version of the “Dead End” play; he would play this character role in several following films. Due to the boys’ wild behavior and their destruction of studio property that was committed during filming, their contracts were sold to Warner Brothers Studio. 

Halop’s first film role with Warner Brothers was the character of Frankie Warren in the 1937 “Crime School”, a reform school film that starred Humphrey Bogart and the Dead End Kids. In 1938, he had a role in the short comedy-musical color film entitled “Swingtime in the Movies”, another film which featured Bogart and the Dead End Kids. As the Kids grew older, Halop and the others appeared in six more films for Warner Brothers which included the 1938 “Angels with Dirty Faces”, the 1939 “They Made Me a Criminal” and the 1939 “On Dress Parade”. 

By the end of the 1930s, William Halop had acted with such stars as James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, John Garfield and Ronald Reagan. In 1940, he appeared as the bully Harry Flashman, speaking with a British accent, in Robert Stevenson’s 1940 coming-of-age drama film for RKO Radio Pictures, “Tom Brown’s School Days”. His co-stars in this film were stage and film actor Cedric Hardwicke and Freddie Bartholomew, who had played the title role in the 1935 “David Copperfield”. Halop also appeared in the role of Billy ‘Ace” Holden in the 1940 Universal twelve-chapter serial “Junior G-Men of the Air”, in which the Dead End Kids prevented the sabotage of the American defense program.

After serving in the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II, William Halop found that he had grown too old to resume the characters he had played during his fame. The last role he played depicted as a juvenile character was Tony Albertini in the 1946 “Gas House Kids”; he was twenty-six at the time. Halop continued to act in film with supporting and small uncredited roles until 1967. 

Starting in 1951, Halop began a twenty-three year career of acting in various television series, where he would appear in an occasional episode. He made appearances in such shows as “Racket Squad”, “The Cisco Kid”, “The Jack Benny Program”, “Playhouse 90”, “Perry Mason”, “The Fugitive”, The Andy Griffith Show”, and “The Thin Man”. In 1970, Halop’s career had a resurgence with the character of Bert Munson, the cab driver and close friend of Archie Bunker on the series “All in the Family”. He appeared in ten episodes of the popular series including the 1972 “Sammy’s Visit”, which starred Sammy Davis, Jr. 

According to interviews given in the latter part of his life, William Halop was married four times, all of which ended in divorce. The nursing skills he acquired in his third marriage to Suzanne Rice, who had multiple sclerosis, led him after their divorce to steady work as a registered nurse in Santa Monica, California. Halop’s  marriage to his fourth wife, Barbara, was quickly ended after she allegedly attacked him. He later moved back in with his second wife, Barbara, but they chose not to remarry.

William Halop’s career included roles in thirty-eight films and appearances in forty-two television series. Following two heart attacks, he underwent open-heart surgery in the fall of 1971. Halop died in Hollywood of a heart attack in November of 1976, at the age of fifty-six. William Halop is interred in the Garden of Sher Mot at Los Angeles’s Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery. At the time of his death, he was working on his autobiography, titled “There’s No Dead End”. 

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Billy Halop”, 1942, Publicity Shot for “Junior G-Men of the Air”, Directors Lewis D. Collins and Ray Taylor, Cinematographer William A. Sickner

Second, Third and Fourth Insert Images: Cinematographer Ernest Haller, Billy Halop in “Blues in the Night”, 1941, Film Gifs, Director Anatole Litvak, Warner Brothers Pictures

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Billy Halop and Humphrey Bogart”, Studio Shoot fro “Crime School”, 1938, Director Lewis Seiler, Cinematographer Arthur Todd, Warner Brothers Pictures

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

 

Tommy Lee Kirk: Film History Series

“Tommy Lee Kirk as Travis Coates”, “Savage Sam”, 1963, Walt Disney Productions, Cinematographer Edward Coleman, Director Norman Tokar

Born in Louisville, Kentucky in December of 1941, Tommy Lee Kirk was an American actor best known for his performances in films produced by Walt Disney Studios. His teen idol status became closely associated with the clean, wholesome product that Disney Studios produced during the late 1950s and early 1960s. 

One of four sons, Tommy Kirk moved at the age of fifteen months with his family to California where they settled in Downey, a city in southeast Los Angeles. In 1954 at the age of thirteen, he  accompanied his older brother Joe to an audition at the Pasadena Playhouse for a role in Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness”. Although Joe was not cast in a role, Tommy Kirk had his stage debut with a role consisting of five lines of dialogue. His small role was seen favorably by a representative from the Gertz Agency of Hollywood who signed him to a contract. 

Kirk made his first television appearance in an episode entitled “The Last of the Old Time Shooting Sheriffs” for the anthology drama series “TV Reader’s Digest”. He appeared in two more Pasadena theater plays and was cast in small roles on other television productions, including  “Gunsmoke” and “The Loretta Young Show”. In August of 1956, Kirk was given a long-term contract by Walt Disney Productions and became a member of the 1955 “The Mickey Mouse Club” television series. He next was cast as Joe Hardy for the Mickey Mouse Club series “The Hardy Boys” and performed in two serials alongside actor Tim Considine who played his older brother Frank Hardy. Broadcasted in that October, the show and Kirk’s performance were well received and led to his long association as a ten idol with the Disney Studio.

Tommy Kirk’s career accelerated with his casting as Travis Coates in the 1957 Disney film “Old Yeller”, an adventure tale of a boy and his heroic dog. Due to the success of his lead role in “Old Yeller”, Kirk became the Disney Studio’s first choice for future American teenager roles. In July of 1958, he was cast in “The Shaggy Dog”, a Disney comedy about a boy inventor who is repeatedly transformed into an Old English Sheepdog. This film, the second highest grossing film of 1959, teamed Kirk with Fred MacMurray, Annette Funicello and Kevin Corcoran, his former co-star from “Old Yeller”. 

With his Disney contract completed, Kirk went to Universal Pictures where he did English dubbing for “The Snow Queen”, a Soviet animated feature. As revenues increased from the screening of “The Shaggy Dog”, Disney Studios resigned Kirk to a long-term studio contract and cast him as the middle son, Ernst Robinson, in its 1960 family adventure film “Swiss Family Robinson”. This family film was followed by a second huge hit, “The Absent-Minded Professor”, a fantasy comedy starring Fred MacMurray as the professor and Kirk as Biff Hawk. Kirk was next cast in several films in which he costarred with actors MacMurray and Jame Wyman in the 1962 “Bon Voyage”, Ed Wynn in the 1961 “Babes in Toyland”, and Annette Funicello in the 1962 “Escapade in Florence”.

In 1963, Tommy Kirk appeared in Disney’s “Son of Flubber”, a sequel to “The Absent-Minded Professor” which became his last film with MacMurray. He next reprised his role as Travis Coates in “Savage Sam”, a sequel to “Old Yeller” which was not as popular as the original film. In 1964, Disney Studios cast Kirk as the student inventor in “The Misadventures of Merlin Jones” where he played opposite Funicello. After it became an  unexpected box office sensation, a sequel entitled “The Monkey’s Uncle” was released in July of 1965 which was equally successful.

Kirk knew he was gay from an early age; however, due to the public intolerance at that time towards homosexuality, he felt isolated and believed that the exposure of his sexuality would damage his film career. In 1963 while filming “The Misadventures of Merlin Jones”, Kirk began a relationship with a boy, six years younger, who lived in Burbank. The boy’s mother informed the Disney Studio which fired him from his role in the 1965 John Wayne western “The Sons of Katie Elder”. Out of protection for its interests, the Disney Studios released Kirk from his contract. However due to the financial success of the “Merlin Jones” film, he was allowed to return to make the 1965 sequel “The Monkey’s Uncle”.

The news of Kirk’s termination from Disney Studios was not made public: he joined American International Pictures which needed a leading man to play opposite Annette Funicello in the 1964 “Pajama Party”. From 1964 to 1969, Kirk appeared in several popular teen-oriented films, musical stage productions of “The Music Man” and “West Side Story”, and mediocre sci-fi and beach films. Practically blacklisted by an industry which deemed outed gay actors as box-office poison, Kirk returned to the musical theater in his home state of Kentucky with appearances in such shows as “Hello, Dolly” and “Anything Goes”.

In 1970, Tommy Kirk did two movies that were not Screen Actors Guild productions, “Ride the Hot Wind” and “Blood of Ghastly Horror” which caused him to lose his SAG membership.. While loss of SAG membership does not disqualify someone from acting, most film productions hire only union members, thus limiting the opportunities for an actor to be hired. Depressed and angry, Kirk sought solace in drugs and once nearly died from an overdose. After overcoming his drug addiction, Kirk began a successful carpet-cleaning business in Los Angeles which he ran for twenty years. He continued to act occasionally, appeared in films and documentary interviews for the DVD releases of some of his best known films and TV shows, and occasionally made personal appearances at film festivals and nostalgia convention/memorabilia festivals.

Tommy Kirk came out publicly as gay in a 1973 interview with Marvin Jones that was published in the January 31st edition of Gay Today. He was studying acting at that time with the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute while working in a Los Angeles restaurant. Kirk was inducted as a Disney Legend in October of 2006 alongside his former co-stars Tim Considine and Kevin Corcoran. In 2006, the first of the “Hardy Boys” serials was issued on DVD as part of the Walt Disney Treasures series. Royalties from the sales of the “Hardy Boys” serials provided Kirk an additional income. 

Tommy Lee Kirk died peacefully in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home at the age of seventy-nine on the 28th of September in 2021. His neighbor Beverly Washburn, an “Old Yeller” co-star, notified Kirk’s longtime friend and former Disney actor Paul Peterson, known for his role as the son on “The Donna Reed Show”. Peterson posted notice of Kirk’s death on Facebook mentioning in the message that Kirk’s family had disowned the gay actor.

Top Insert Image: Tommy Kirk, “Old Yeller”, 1957, Film Shot

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Tommy Kirk and Tim Considine”, 1956, “The Hardy Boys” Series

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Annette Funicello and Tommy Kirk”, Studio Publicity Photo Shoot

Fourth Insert Image: hotographer Unknown, “Tommy Kirk, Pajama Party”, 1964, Film Shoot

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Tommy Kirk and Dorothy Lamour, Pajama Party”, 1964, Studio Photo Shoot

Calendar: April 7

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 7th of April

A Casual Pose

On April 7, 1939 David Frost, the journalist and writer, was born in Tenterdon, England.

David Frost was chosen by writer and producer Ned Sherrin to host the satirical program “That Was the Week That Was” (TW3) after Frost’s flatmate John Bird suggested Sherrin should see Frost’s cabaret act at The Blue Angel nightclub. The series, which ran for less than 18 months during 1962–63, was part of the satire boom in early 1960s Britain and became a popular program.

In 1968 Frost signed a contract worth £125,000 to appear on American television in his own show on three evenings each week, the largest such arrangement for a British television personality at the time. From 1969 to 1972, hosted “The David Frost Show” on the Group W (U.S. Westinghouse Corporation) television stations in the United States. Throughout the years of his show, David Frost, known for his personalized style of interviews, spoke with such personalities as Jack Benny, Tennessee Williams, and Muhammad Ali; he was also the last person to interview Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran following the 1979 Iranian revolution.

In 1977 “The Nixon Interviews”, a series of five 90-minute interviews with former US President Richard Nixon, were broadcast. Nixon was paid $600,000 plus a share of the profits for the interviews, which had to be funded by Frost himself after the US television networks turned down the program, describing it as “checkbook journalism”. Frost’s company negotiated its own deals to syndicate the interviews with local stations across the US and internationally, creating what filmmaker Ron Howard described as “the first fourth network.”

For the show, David Frost taped around 29 hours of interviews with Nixon over a period of four weeks. Nixon, who had previously avoided discussing his role in the watergate scandal which had led to his resignation as President in 1974, expressed contrition saying “I let the American people down and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life”.

David Frost was the only person to have interviewed all eight British Prime Ministers serving between 1964 and 2014 and all seven US Presidents in office between 1969 and 2008. He was very active with the Alzheimer’s Research Trust and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. His conversations with Nixon became the subject of Ron Howard’s 2008 film “Frost/Nixon”, nominated for five Golden Globes and for five Academy Awards. David Frost died on August 31, 2013 at the age of 74 on board the cruise ship MS Queen Elizabeth, on which he was engaged as a speaker. His memorial stone is in Poet’s Corner of the Westminster Abbey for his contribution to British culture.

Calendar: March 25

Year: Day to Day Men: March 25

Brushstrokes of Light

The twenty-fifth of March in 1939 marks the birth date of Dorothy Catherine Fontana, an American novelist and television script writer and story editor. She is best known for her work on the original “Star Trek” series. 

Born in Sussex, New Jersey, Dorothy Catherine Fontana attended New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University where she graduated with an Associate Degree as an Executive Secretarial major. After graduation, Fontana relocated to New York City where she became junior secretary at the Screen Gems Studios office. She later relocated to Los Angeles where she gained employment at Revue Studios as secretary to Samuel A. Peeples, the  scriptwriter for the 1960 television Western “Overland Trail”. 

After the series was cancelled, Samuel Peeples and Fontana began work on the 1960 Western series “The Tall Man” for Revue Productions. Fontana wrote the story for episode six “A Bounty for Billy” and episode thirty-three “The Cloudbusters”. She worked with Peeples on “Frontier Circus” and, for producer Nat Holt, on “Shotgun Slade”. All of Fontana’s stories at this time were created under the name of Dorothy C. Fontana. 

In 1963, Dorothy Fontana saw an opportunity for a position on NBC’s new Marine Corps series “The Lieutenant”. She began working as a secretary for NBC producer Del Reisman who had previously edited for Rod Sterling’s “The Twilight Zone”. As one of only a few female writes at NBC, Fontana adopted the gender-blind pen name, D. C. Fontana, to prevent her stories from being prejudged. She became secretary for Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Lieutenant series, who encouraged her writing. As the series came to an end in 1964, Fontana published her first novel “Brazos River” written in collaboration with Harry Sanford. 

In mid-1964, Gene Roddenberry began work on “Star Trek”. Encouraged by associate producer Robert H. Justman, Roddenberry assigned Fontana the task of writing the teleplay for an episode he called “The Day Charlie Became God”. She created the script for “Charlie X”, the second episode of the first season, for which she received credit for the teleplay. Fontana wrote episode nineteen of the first season, “Tomorrow is Yesterday”, that became the first “Star Trek” episode solely written by a woman. She also rewrote “This Side of Paradise”, the twenty-fourth episode in which flower spores induce Spock to fall in love. In September of 1966, Fontana was promoted to story editor by Roddenberry and the NBC network.

Dorothy Fontana worked on “Star Trek” through the entire second season as both story editor and rewriter. She was responsible for the ideas behind second season’s episodes “Journey to Babel” and “Friday’s Child”. Instrumental in the rewrite of the 1968 “The Ultimate Computer” episode, Fontana was one of four writers who made initial changes in Harlan Ellison’s “The City on the Edge of Forever”. The script was ultimately rewritten three more times by Roddenberry before it was aired. Fontana left the “Star Trek” team prior to the third season but wrote scripts for it on a freelance basis. Among these were the episodes “The Way to Eden”, “The Enterprise Incident” and “That Which Survives”.

During the 1970s, Fontana took on many roles: scriptwriter, story editor, and associate producer. She wrote the script for Roddenberry’s 1973 “Genesis II” and was both story editor and associate producer on “Star Trek: The Animated Series” which won the 1975 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Series. Fontana worked briefly on the 1977 “Fantastic Journey” and wrote for several series including “The Six Million Dollar Man”, “The Waltons”, and “The Streets of San Francisco”. For the first season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, she worked as both story editor and associate producer; however, her relationship with Roddenberry became strained so she left the series in May of 1988. 

Dorothy Fontana continued to work within the “Star Trek” universe. She wrote the 1989 “Vulcan’s Glory”, a “Star Trek: The Original Series” novel published by Pocket Books. Fontana wrote the “Dax” episode of “Star Trek; Deep Space Nine”, sharing a joint credit with Peter Allan Fields. For the show “Babylon 5”, she wrote “The War Prayer”  and “Legacies” episodes for the first season as well as “A Distant Star”, a second season episode that featured her character Neroon. Fontana also created scripts for Bethesda Softworks’s “Star Trek: Legacy” and “Star Trek: Tactical Assault” video games.

A board member of the Writers Guild of America and a twice-inducted member of the American Screenwriters Association Hall of Fame, Dorothy Catherine Fontana died of cancer at the Burbank Hospital in California on the second of December in 2019. 

Calendar: March 9

Year: Day to Day Men: March 9

The Cross Bearer

The ninth of March in 1940 marks the birth date of actor Raúl Rafael Carlos Juliá y Arcelay known for his intense and varied roles on stage and screen. For each of his film roles, Raúl Julia did extensive character research to familiarize himself with their experiences and ideologies. During his life, he did charitable work mostly focused on at-risk youth, the Latin-American community and the arts.

Born in a suburb of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Raúl Julia attended a private Catholic school in Hato Rey. He later attended Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola where. interested in the works of Shakespeare, he organized and performed in plays of “Julius Caesar”, “Hamlet’, “King Lear”, and “The Tempest’. Julia studied for a year at New York City’s Fordham University before attending the University of Puerto Rico where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree. Although his parents wanted him to have a career in law, Julie chose acting as full-time career.

In Puerto Rico, Julia performed in several Shakespearean plays including “Macbeth” and “Othello” at San Juan’s theaters. He was subsequently recruited by actress and comedian Lillian Hurst to perform alongside her. During one of their performances, Julia was noticed by actor Orson Bean who suggested he continue his acting career in New York City. After working a variety of odd jobs in Manhattan, he sought work in both Broadway and off-Broadway productions. 

After receiving his Actors Equity card, Raúl Julia was able to get a role in the production of “Bye Bye Birdie”. In September of 1968 after four auditions, he debuted in his first Broadway production as the character Chan in “The Cuban Thing”. In the following two years, Julia appeared in playwright Arthur Kopit’s 1969 production “Indians” and Mel Arrighi’s 1970 “The Castro Complex”. Julia also worked in the medium of television in the early 1970s as Rafael the Fix-It Man, a recurring role in the third season of “Sesame Street”. 

Julia performed in several major theatrical productions during the 1970s. For his role of Proteus in the 1971 rock musical “Two Gentlemen of Verona”. he was nominated for a Tony Award and won the 1972 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance. In 1974, Julia received his second Tony Award nomination for his role of Charley Wykeham in the 1974 Broadway revival of “Where’s Charley”. In 1976, he was nominated a third time for his role of Mack the Knife in “The Threepenny Opera”. From late October of 1978 to June of 1979, Julia played the role of Count Dracula in the Broadway revival of “Dracula” with Edward Gorey’s stage sets.

 Raúl Julia’s film career began with roles in three films during the early 1970s: the crime thriller “The Organization”; the drama  “The Panic in Needle Park”, his first feature film; and the film adaption of Richard Fariña’s novel “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me”. The most notable of Julia’s film work at this time was his role of prison inmate Valentin Arregui, played opposite William Hurt as Luis Molina, in the 1985 drama “Kiss of the Spider Woman”. To understand his role, Julia traveled to South America where he interviewed rebels and ex-prisoners to familiarize himself with their experiences. He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and won, along with William Hurt, the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Award for Best Actor.

In addition to being a distinguished actor in numerous film, television and theater productions, Julia continued the charitable work that had been done by his parents. Concerned about the rising levels of violence among teenagers, he sponsored screenwriting programs and supported young actors. Julia was constantly involved with the Latin American community and served as the chairman of the Joseph Papp Celebrity Coalition for Racial Harmony. As part of his work for The Hunger Project, he made monthly donations, promoted the program through advertisements and narrated its bilingual videos. Julia was given the Global Citizen Award for his work with The Hunger Project and, in 1992, received the Courage of Conscience Award. 

Unknown to the public, Raúl Julia suffered from stomach cancer for three years prior to his death. During those years, he played the title role in the 1992 Broadway revival of “Man of La Mancha”, with performances eight times a week. Julia also reprised his role as Gomez Addams in the 1993 “Addams Family Values” and took a supporting role in the 1994 television series “Down Came a Blackbird”. In early 1994 during the filming of “The Burning Season” in Mexico, Julia was airlifted to a hospital in Los Angeles for medical attention. Upon his recovery, he finished the film.

On the sixteenth of October in 1994 after attending New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Julia was rushed by ambulance to the North Shore University Hospital in Long Island due to intense abdominal pains; his situation gradually worsened. On the night of the twentieth, Julia suffered a stroke, fell into a coma and was put on life support. Raúl Julia died on the twenty-fourth of October at the age of fifty-four from complications of a stroke, never having gained consciousness. His body was flown to Puerto Rico where a state funeral attended by thousands was held in San Juan. 

Calendar: February 20

Year: Day to Day Men: February 20

This Old House

The twentieth of February in 1906 marks the birth date of American character actor Gale Gordon. He had a long and prolific career in both radio and television series. Gordon’s portrayal of grumpy and arrogant characters made him the comic foil on “Our Miss Brooks” and three Lucille Ball series.

Born Charles Thomas Aldrich Jr. in New York City, Gale Gordon was the son of vaudevillian Charles Thomas Aldrich and English actress Gloria Gordon. His first appearance on radio broadcast was the roles of Mayor La Trivia and Foggy Williams on the 1935 “Fibber McGee and Molly”. Gordon was the first actor to play the role of Flash Gordon on the 1935 radio serial “The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon”. 

From 1937 to 1939, Gordon starred as The Octopus in the “Speed Gibson” radio series. During the years of World War II, he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard where he served for four years. At the end of the war, Gordon returned to radio and played the role of Rumson Bullard on “The Great Gildersleeve”, one of the earliest spin-offs in the entertainment industry. In 1946, he had one of his most dramatic roles on radio, the bachelor amateur detective Gregory Hood on the popular 1946-1947 “The Casebook of Gregory Hood”. The series was originally just a summer replacement for the canceled “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”; the network had failed to reach a contractual agreement with the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate.

In 1950, Gale Gordon played John Granby, a former city dweller turned farmer, in the radio series “Granby’s Green Acres”, which was the model for the 1960s television series “Green Acres”. He created the role of principle Osgood Conklin on the 1948 radio series “Our Miss Brooks” and later carried the role to the 1952 television series. Gordon also worked at this time on the radio show “My Favorite Husband” in which he played Rudolph Atterbury opposite Lucille Ball as Liz Cugat. He and Ball had previously worked together from 1938 to 1939 on “The Wonder Show” with actor and singer Jack Haley, later known as the Tin-Man in “The Wizard of Oz”

Gordon was the first choice for the role of Fred Mertz on the 1951 television situation comedy “I Love Lucy”. However, he had made a commitment to his role in “Our Miss Brooks”, in addition to his other concurrent radio shows. Gordon did appear in two guest roles on “I Love Lucy” as Ricky Ricardo’s boss, Alvin Littlefield, the owner of the Tropicana Club. In the late 1950s, he was a regular on the 1957 NBC sitcom “Sally” and also appeared on ABC’s “The Real McCoys” with Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna. Other appearances included a guest role on the 1960 ABC “Harrigan and Son” and roles in two episodes of “The Donna Reed Show” and seven episodes of “The Danny Thomas Show”.

Lucille Ball created “The Lucy Show” in 1952 and planned to hire Gale Gordon for the role of the banker Theodore J. Mooney. However, after the death of actor Joseph Kearns who played George Wilson on “Dennis the Menace”, Gordon had signed a contract to play John Wilson on the show. When “Dennis the Menace” ended its run in the spring of 1963, Gordon joined “The Lucy Show” for the 1963-1964 season. After the sale of Desilu Studios in 1968, Lucille Ball discontinued the show and remade it into “Here’s Lucy” with herself as producer and distributor. Gordon took on the role of her boss, Harrison Otis. 

When “Here’s Lucy” ended in 1974, Gordon basically retired from acting. His friend and acting cohort, Lucille Ball persuaded him to take a role in her new series “Life with Lucy”, which ran for three months. Gordon’s final acting appearance was a 1991 reprise of Mr. Mooney for the first episode of”Hi Honey, I’m Home”, a thirteen episode television comedy.

Gale Gordon and his wife Virginia Curley lived on a 150 acre ranch he had helped construct in Borrego Springs, California. Gordon wrote two books in the 1940s: “Leaves from the Story Trees” and “Nursery Rhymes for Hollywood Babies” and two one-act plays. He was also one of the few carob growers in the United States. Gordon’s wife of nearly sixty years died in May of 1995; he died of lung cancer one month later on the thirtieth of June. Gordon was inducted posthumously into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1999 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Second Insert Image: Publicity Photo, Gale Gordon and Eve Arden, “Our Miss Brooks”, September 1955

Third Insert Image: Publicity Photo, Gale Gordon and Jay North, “Dennis the Menace”, circa 1962-1963

Calendar: February 11

Year: Day to Day Men: February 11

The City’s Pier

The eleventh of February in 1938 marks the first televised broadcast of a science fiction program. The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, adapted Karel Čapek’s seminal play, “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)” into a thirty-five minute production which aired at 3:30 in the afternoon. 

Born in January of 1890, Karel Čapek was a Czech writer, playwright and journalist. He became best known for his science fiction works, most notably the 1936 “War with the Newts”, a satirical work of exploitation and human flaws, and his “R.U.R.”, a three-act play with prologue that introduced the word robot to the English language. Although nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Čapek never received the award. Several awards, however, commemorate his name among which is the Karel Čapek Prize that is awarded to those who contribute to the reinforcement and maintenance of democratic and humanist values in society. 

The robots in Čapek’s 1920 “R.U.R.” are not robots in the popularly understood sense of an automaton or a mechanical device. They were artificially biological organisms that were similar to humans. These robots more closely resembled more modern conceptions such as replicants ( 1982 Blade Runner ) or android hosts ( 2016 Westworld television series ). Their skin and brains were produced in vats, their bones in factories, and their nerve fibers, arteries and intestines were spun on factory bobbins. The robots, themselves living biological beings, were finally assembled on factory lines as opposed to grown or born.

“R.U.R.” had its first theatrical premiere on the twenty-fifth of January in 1921 at Prague’s National Theater. English writer Paul Selver translated the play into English and sold it to St. Martin’s Theater in London. The translation was adapted for British theater by actor Sir Nigel Ross Playfair in 1922. Performance rights for the United States and Canada were sold in the same year to the New York Theater Guild. The American premiere of “R.U.R.” took place in October of 1922 at New York City’s Garrick Theater on 35th Street in Manhattan where it ran for one hundred and eighty-four performances. 

In April of 1923, actor and director Basil Dean produced “R.U.R.” in Britain for the Reandean Company at London’s St. Martin’s Theater. This version was based on Playfair’s adaptation and included several revisions from the New York Theater Guild. During the 1920s, the play was performed in several British and American theaters. In June of 1923, Karel Čapek sent a letter to translator Edward March with the play’s final lines that had been omitted from previous translations. A copy of this final and complete translation of Čapek’s play later appeared in the 2001 journal of “Science Fiction Studies”.

The BBC airing of Čapek’s “R.U.R.” occurred just two years after England launched the broadcasting service; it is unclear whether any recordings of the event survived. The play’s effects, though very rudimentary by today’s standards, made it very suitable for showing on the new television medium. Although its popularity peaked in the 1920s, Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” became the foundation of many of science fiction’s modern franchises, both film and television.