25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Mills Brothers

October 25, 2019

The Mills Brothers, sometimes billed as The Four Mills Brothers, were an American jazz and pop vocal quartet of the 20th century who made more than 2,000 recordings that combined sold more than 50 million copies, and garnered at least three dozen gold records. The Mills Brothers were inducted into The Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998.

The group was originally composed of four African-American brothers born in Piqua, Ohio, 25 miles north of Dayton: John Jr. bassist and guitarist, Herbert tenor, Harry baritone, and Donald lead tenor. Their parents were John H. and Eathel Mills. John Sr. owned a barber shop and founded a barbershop quartet, called the ‘”Four Kings of Harmony”‘.

As the boys grew older, they began singing in the choir of the Cyrene African Methodist Episcopal Church and in the Park Avenue Baptist Church in Piqua. After their lessons at the Spring Street Grammar School, they would gather in front of their father’s barbershop on Public Square or at the corner of Greene and Main to sing and play the kazoo to passersby.

They entered an amateur contest at Piqua’s Mays Opera House, but while on stage, Harry discovered he had lost his kazoo. He cupped his hands to his mouth and imitated a trumpet. The success of his imitation led to all the brothers taking on instruments to imitate and created their early signature sound. John Jr. accompanied the four-part harmony first with a ukulele and then a guitar. They practiced imitating orchestras they heard on the radio. John, as the bass, would imitate the tuba. Harry, a baritone, imitated the trumpet, Herbert became the second trumpet and Donald the trombone. They entertained on the Midwest theater circuit, at house parties, tent shows, music halls and supper clubs throughout the area and became well known for their close harmonies, mastery of scat singing, and their ability to imitate musical instruments with their voices.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Television Permalink

Milton Berle

October 25, 2019

Milton Berle was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC’s Texaco Star Theater, in 1948 he was the first major star of US television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr. Television to millions during TV’s golden age.

Milton Berlinger was born to a Jewish family in a five-story walkup at 68 West 118th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, he chose Milton Berle as his professional name when he was 16. His father, Moses Berlinger, was a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah Glantz Berlinger, eventually became stagestruck and changed her name to Sandra Berle when Milton became famous.

Berle entered show business at the age of five when he won an amateur talent contest. He appeared as a child actor in silent films, beginning with The Perils of Pauline, filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The director told Berle that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography, he explained, “I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. Which is exactly what happened, except that at the crucial moment they threw a bundle of rags instead of me from the train. I bet there are a lot of comedians around today who are sorry about that.”

By Berle’s account, he continued to play child roles in other films: Bunny’s Little Brother, Tess of the Storm Country, Birthright, Love’s Penalty, Divorce Coupons and Ruth of the Range. Berle recalled, “There were even trips out to Hollywood—the studios paid—where I got parts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, with Mary Pickford; The Mark of Zorro, with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Tillie’s Punctured Romance, with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler.”

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Milton Cross

October 25, 2019

Milton John Cross was an American radio announcer famous for his work on the NBC and ABC radio networks. He was best known as the voice of the Metropolitan Opera, hosting its Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts for 43 years, from the time of their inception in 1931 until his death in 1975.

Born in New York City, Cross started his career just as network radio itself was in its earliest stages. He joined the New Jersey station WJZ in 1921. By 1927 WJZ had moved to Manhattan and had become the flagship station of the Blue Network of NBC’s new national radio network. Cross’ voice became familiar as he not only delivered announcements for the Blue Network but also hosted a number of popular programs. In addition to the Metropolitan Opera, Cross was the announcer for the quiz program Information Please, and the musical humor show The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street among others.

But it is as the host of the Metropolitan’s broadcasts that Cross will be remembered. His distinctive voice conveyed the excitement of live performances “from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City” for generations of radio listeners. Initially he broadcast from a seat in “Box 44” at the old Met at Broadway and 40th St. In 1966, he introduced America to the Met’s new home at Lincoln Center as he hosted a special broadcast of the opening night performance from a modern radio booth in the new house. Cross also edited several popular editions of opera synopses, published in conjunction with the Met broadcasts.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Milton Sills

October 25, 2019

Milton Sills was a highly successful American stage and film actor of the early twentieth century.

Milton Sills was born in Chicago, Illinois into a wealthy and highly regarded family. He was the son of a successful mineral dealer father and an heiress mother from a prosperous banking family. Upon completing high school, Sills was offered a one-year scholarship to the University of Chicago where he studied psychology and philosophy. After graduating, he was offered a position at the university as a researcher and within several years worked his way up to becoming a professor at the school.

In 1905, stage actor Donald Robertson visited the school to lecture on author and playwright Henrik Ibsen and suggested to Sills that he should try his hand at acting. On a whim, Sills agreed and left his prestigious teaching career to embark on a stint in acting. Sills joined Robertson’s stock theater company and began touring the country.

In 1908, while Milton Sills was performing in New York City, he garnered critical praise from such notable Broadway producers as David Belasco and Charles Frohman. That same year he made his Broadway debut in This Woman and This Man, which was an immediate success with both the theater-going public and critics. From 1908 to 1914, Sills appeared in about a dozen Broadway shows, becoming a crowd favorite and attaining a great deal of fame.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Miriam Hopkins

October 25, 2019

Miriam Hopkins was an American actress known for her versatility in a wide variety of roles.

Born as Ellen Miriam Hopkins in Savannah, Georgia, she was raised in Bainbridge, a town in the state’s southwest near the Alabama border. She attended a finishing school in Vermont and later Syracuse University in New York.

At the age of 20, she became a chorus girl in New York City. In 1930, she signed with Paramount Pictures, and made her official film debut in Fast and Loose. Her first great success was in Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise, where she proved her charm and wit as a beautiful and jealous pickpocket. During the remainder of the decade, she appeared in such films as The Smiling Lieutenant and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Design for Living, Becky Sharp, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, Barbary Coast, These Three and The Old Maid. Hopkins rejected the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night, The role went to Claudette Colbert and resulted in an Academy Award.

Hopkins had well-publicized fights with her arch-enemy Bette Davis, when they co-starred in their two films The Old Maid and Old Acquaintance. Davis admitted to enjoying very much a scene in Old Acquaintance in which she shakes Hopkins hand. There were even press photos taken with both divas in boxing rings with gloves up and director Vincent Sherman between the two.

25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

Mischa Elman

October 25, 2019

Mikhail Saulovich ‘Mischa’ Elman was a Jewish, Ukrainian-born, violinist, famed for his passionate style and beautiful tone.

He was born in the small town of Talnoye near Kiev. His grandfather was a klezmer, a Jewish folk musician, who also played the violin. It became apparent when Mischa was very young that he had perfect pitch, but his father hesitated about a career as a musician, since musicians were not very high on the social scale. He finally gave in, and gave Mischa a miniature violin, on which he soon learned several tunes by himself. Soon thereafter, he was taken to Odessa, where he studied at the Imperial Academy of Music. Pablo de Sarasate gave him a recommendation, stating that he could become one of the great talents of Europe. He auditioned for Leopold Auer at the age of 11, playing the Wieniawski Concerto No. 2 and 24th Caprice by Paganini. Auer was so impressed that he had Elman admitted to the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Elman was still only a boy when Auer arranged for him to play with the famous Colonne Orchestra during

their visit to Pavlovsk. Knowing Édouard Colonne’s hatred of child prodigies, Auer did not tell him Elman’s age when making the arrangements, and not until the famous conductor saw young Mischa waiting to go on the platform did he realize that he had engaged a child. He was furious, and flatly refused to continue with the programme. Frantic attempts were made to assure him that Elman had the recommendation of Auer himself and was well capable of doing justice to the music, but Colonne was adamant, ” I have never yet played with a child, and I refuse to start now,” he retorted. So Elman had to play with piano accompaniment while conductor and orchestra sat listening.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Mitch Miller

October 25, 2019

Mitchell William “Mitch” Miller was an American musician, singer, conductor, record producer, A&R man and record company executive. Miller was one of the most influential figures in American popular music during the 1950s and early 1960s, both as the head of Artists and Repertoire at Columbia Records and as a best-selling recording artist with an NBC television series, Sing Along with Mitch. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in the early 1930s, Miller began his musical career as an accomplished player of the oboe and English horn, and recorded several highly regarded classical albums featuring his instrumental work, but he is best remembered as a conductor, choral director, television performer and recording executive.

Mitch Miller was born in Rochester, New York, on July 4, 1911, to a Jewish family. His mother was Hinda Rosenblum Miller, a former seamstress, and his father, Abram Calmen Miller, a Russian immigrant wrought-iron worker. He had four siblings, two of whom, Leon and Joseph, survived him.

He was married for sixty-five years to the former Frances Alexander, who died in 2000. They had two daughters; Andrea Miller, and Margaret Miller Reuther; and a son, Mitchell “Mike” Miller; and two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Mitch lived in New York City for many years and died there on July 31, 2010, after a short illness.

Miller took up the oboe at first as a teenager, because it was the only instrument available when he went to audition for his junior high school orchestra. A talented oboist, at age fifteen he played with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and after graduating from high school he attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. He graduated in 1932 with honors.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Mike Medavoy

October 25, 2019

MIKE MEDAVOY Biography

Sample some of the best American films over the past forty years and there’s a good chance Mike Medavoy played a role in the success of many of them. From agent to studio chief to producer, he has been involved with over 300 feature films, of which 16 have been nominated and 7 have won Best Picture Oscars®, as well as numerous international film festival awards.

Medavoy began his career at Universal Studios in 1964. He rose from the mailroom to become a casting director. In 1965, he became an agent at General Artist Corporation and then vice president at Creative Management Agency. Joining International Famous Agency as vice president in charge of the motion picture department in 1971, he worked with such prestigious clients as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Gene Wilder, Jeanne Moreau, and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

United Artists brought him in as senior vice president of production in 1974 where he was part of the team responsible for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Rocky,” and “Annie Hall,” which won Best Picture Oscars® in 1975, 1976, and 1977, respectively. Other notable films included “Apocalypse Now,” “Raging Bull,” “Network” and “Coming Home.” In 1978, Medavoy co-founded Orion Pictures where, during his tenure, “Platoon,” “Amadeus,” “Robocop,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “The Terminator,” “Dances with Wolves” and “Silence of the Lambs” were released. In 1990, after twelve successful years at Orion, Medavoy became chairman of TriStar Pictures, where he oversaw such critically-acclaimed box office hits as “Philadelphia,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Cliffhanger,” “The Fisher King,” “Legends of the Fall” and Steven Spielberg’s “Hook.”

As chairman and co-founder of Phoenix Pictures, Medavoy has brought to the screen “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” “U-Turn,” “Apt Pupil,” “The Thin Red Line,” “The 6th Day,” “Basic,” “Holes,” “All the King’s Men,” “Zodiac,” “Pathfinder” and “Miss Potter,” among others. These films have received numerous nominations, won two Golden Bears at the Berlin Film Festival, five Golden Satellite Awards, a cinematography award for John Toll from the ASC and nominations from the DGA and WGA for Terrence Malick. The Thin Red Line and The People vs. Larry Flint each received Oscar® nominations.

Phoenix recently released “Shutter Island,” a film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo Di Caprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow, and will soon release “Shanghai,” starring John Cusack and Gong Li. Medavoy is also the executive producer of the documentary “The Wildest Dream.”

Medavoy has received numerous awards including the 1992 Motion Picture Pioneer of the Year Award, the 1997 Career Achievement Award from UCLA, and the Lifetime Achievement Award (1998) at the Cannes Film Festival. He was awarded the 1999 UCLA Neil H. Jacoby Award, which honors individuals who have made exceptional contributions to humanity. Medavoy also received the inaugural Fred Zinnemann Award (2001), presented by the Anti-Defamation League, the Israel Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2002), as well as a Career Achievement Award from the University of Central Florida (2002). In 2004, he received the Louis B. Mayer Motion Picture Business Leader of the Year Award from Florida Atlantic University and in 2005, he was the recipient of UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and Producers Guild of America Vision Award.

In 2005, Medavoy was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame and received a star on Hollywood Boulevard. In 2007, he received the Stella Adler Actors Studio Marion Brando Award and in 2008, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jerusalem Film Foundation. In 2009, he was given the Honorary Doctorate at the Academy of Art in San Francisco and was named Chevalier of the French Government’s Legion of Honor. Mike also received the Bernardo O’Higgins award from the Chilean government on February 16th, 2010.

Medavoy has also served as chairman of the jury of the Tokyo Film Festival, advisor to the Shanghai Film Festival and advisor to the St. Petersburg Festival. He was a member of the board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences from 1977 to 1981. Medavoy is also one of the original founding members of the board of governors of the Sundance Institute (1978) and is chairman emeritus of the American Cinematheque and the Stella Adler Actors Studio in New York.

Medavoy has made a mark not only within his industry, but in his community as well. He was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles by Governor Jerry Brown and was appointed by Mayor Richard Riordan as Commissioner on the Los Angeles Board of Parks and Recreations. He is a member of the board of directors of the University of Tel Aviv. He also serves on the board of trustees of the UCLA Foundation and is a member of the Chancellor’s Associates, the Dean’s Advisory Board at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television and the Alumni Association’s Student Relations Committee. He is also the co-chairman of the Burkle Center for UCLA’s Center for International Relations and served as a member of the board of advisors at the Kennedy School at Harvard University for five years. In 2002, Governor Gray Davis appointed Mike to the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center’s Executive Advisory Board; he is also a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Medavoy is also on the Baryshnikov Arts Center Advisory Committee in New York, and serves on the board of Harvard’s School of Public Diplomacy.

Throughout his career, Mike Medavoy has also been active in politics. In 1984, he was Co-Finance Chair of the Gary Hart campaign. He also actively participated in President Clinton’s campaigns in 1992 and 1996. In 2008, he supported the candidacy of Barack Obama, and his wife, Irena, was the Co-Finance Chair.

In 2002, Simon & Schuster published Mr. Medavoy’s best-selling book, You ‘re Only As Good As Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films and 100 For Which I Should Be Shot – which was subsequently released in paperback in 2003. Mike’s new book, entitled American Idol After Iraq; Competing for Hearts and Minds in the Global Media Age and published in 2009, reflects on the impact of media on U.S. foreign policy with co-author Nathan Gardels, editor of the National Political Quarterly.

Mike was born in Shanghai, China in 1941 of Russian-Jewish parents, and lived in Chile from 1947 to 1957. He graduated from UCLA in 1963. He is married to Irena Medavoy, a founder of Team Safe-T and a charity executive and fundraiser for the Industry Task Force. Mike Medavoy has two sons, Brian and Nicholas, and resides in Beverly Hills, California.