Mike Gore is a movie theater owner who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in Motion pictures. His star is located in the sidewalk in front of 6315 Hollywood Blvd.
Mike Medavoy
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.
Mike Myers
Michael John "Mike" Myers is a British Canadian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film producer. He was a long-time cast member on the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s and the early 1990s and starred as the title characters in the films Wayne's World, Austin Powers, and Shrek.
Myers was born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, the son of Alice E., an office supervisor who was formerly in the Royal Air Force, and Eric Myers, who worked in the insurance business and previously was a Royal Engineer in the British Army. Both of his parents are from Liverpool, England. He has two older brothers, Peter and Paul Myers, the latter of whom is an indie rock singer-songwriter, broadcaster and author. Myers is of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, and was raised Protestant.
He attended Sir John A. Macdonald Collegiate Institute but then changed schools and went to Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Ontario. He began working in commercials at age eight, and at ten he made a commercial for British Columbia Hydro Electric with Gilda Radner playing his mother. He was a very popular person in his school. During high school, to make girls laugh, he would go into the Wayne?s World character that later came to be known as Wayne Campbell. The day he finished his high school finals he joined Second City Theatre. Later, he left Second City to tour Britain with comedian Neil Mullarkey.
Mike is a Dungeons & Dragons player and was one of several celebrities to have participated in the Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day in 2006.
Mike Wallace
Myron Leon “Mike” Wallace is an American journalist, former game show host and media personality.
Wallace has been a correspondent for CBS’ 60 Minutes since its debut in 1968. During his 50+ year career, he has interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers. Wallace retired as a regular full-time correspondent in 2006 but still appears on the 60 Minutes series.
Wallace, whose family’s surname was originally Wallechinsky, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts to Russian-Jewish parents. There he attended Brookline High School, graduating in 1935. He went on to the University of Michigan, graduating in 1939 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. While at Michigan he reported for the Michigan Daily and was a member of the Alpha Gamma Chapter of the Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity.
Wallace appeared as a guest on the popular radio quiz show Information Please on February 7, 1939, while still a senior at the University of Michigan. His first job in radio was as newscaster and continuity writer for WOOD Radio in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This job lasted until 1940 when he joined WXYZ Radio in Detroit, Michigan as an announcer. He then went on to become a freelance radio worker in Chicago, Illinois.
Milburn Stone
Milburn Stone was an American television actor, a nephew of Broadway comedian Fred Stone and the son of a shopkeeper, best known for his role as “Doc” on the CBS western series Gunsmoke.
Stone was born in Burrton in Harvey County in central Kansas. He began his screen career in the 1930s, having been featured in Monogram Pictures’ series of “Tailspin Tommy” adventures. In 1940, he appeared with Marjorie Reynolds, Tristram Coffin, and I. Stanford Jolley in the comedy espionage film Chasing Trouble. Stone was signed by Universal Pictures in 1943 and became a familiar face in its features and serials. One of his film roles was a radio columnist in the Gloria Jean-Kirby Grant musical I’ll Remember April. He made such an impression in this film that Universal gave him a starring role in the 1945 serial The Master Key.
One of CBS Radio’s hit series, the western Gunsmoke, was adapted for television in 1955 and recast with experienced screen actors. Howard McNear, radio’s “Doc Adams,” was replaced by Milburn Stone, who gave the role a harder edge consistent with his screen portrayals. He stayed with Gunsmoke through its entire run and was often shown sparring in a friendly manner with costars Dennis Weaver and Ken Curtis, who played, respectively, Chester Goode and deputy Festus Haggen. His other co-stars were James Arness, Amanda Blake, Burt Reynolds, Glenn Strange, Buck Taylor and Roger Ewing.
A painting of the Doc Adams character was commissioned from Gary Hawk, a painter from Stone’s home state of Kansas. When then-President Ronald Reagan, a friend of Milburn Stone, heard about the painting, Gary Hawk was invited to the Oval Office to present the artwork to the President. Stone lived to see Reagan emerge as the likely Republican nominee for President in 1980 but not to witness Reagan’s election.
Mildred Dunnock
Mildred Dunnock was an American theater, film and television actress.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Western Senior High School, Dunnock was a school teacher who did not start acting until she was in her early thirties. She attended Goucher College where she was a member of Alpha Phi sorority.
After a couple of roles in Broadway productions, Dunnock won praise for her performance as a Welsh school teacher in The Corn is Green. The 1945 film version marked her screen debut opposite Bette Davis.
During the 1940s Dunnock performed mostly on stage, in such dramas as Another Part of the Forest and Death of a Salesman and in the musical Lute Song. She reprised her Salesman role in the 1951 film version. She originated the role of Big Mama in the Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, although she lost the movie role to Judith Anderson. Her films include The Trouble with Harry, Love Me Tender, Baby Doll, Peyton Place, The Nun’s Story, Butterfield 8, and Sweet Bird of Youth .
Mildred Harris
Mildred Harris was an American film actress. Harris began her career in the film industry as a popular child actress at age eleven. At the age of fifteen, she was cast as a harem girl in D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance. She appeared as a leading lady through the 1920s but her career slowed with the advent of the “talkies”. She was critically praised for No, No Nanette in 1930, had a few bit parts in the early 1940s, and made her last appearance in the posthumously released Having A Wonderful Crime of 1945.
Harris has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6307 Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles, California. In 1992, she was portrayed by Milla Jovovich in the biographical film Chaplin.
Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Harris made her first screen appearance at the age of eleven in the 1912 Francis Ford and Thomas H. Ince-directed Western short The Post Telegrapher. She followed the film with various juvenile roles, often appearing opposite child actor Paul Willis. In 1914, she was hired by The Oz Film Manufacturing Company to portray Fluff in The Magic Cloak of Oz and Button-Bright in His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz. In 1916, at the age of 15, she appeared as a harem girl in Griffith’s epic Intolerance.
In the 1920s, Harris graduated to leading lady roles opposite leading men such as Conrad Nagel, Milton Sills, Lionel Barrymore, Rod La Rocque and the Moore brothers, Owen and Tom. She appeared in Frank Capra’s 1928 silent drama The Power of the Press with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Jobyna Ralston.
Michele Lee
Michele Lee is an American singer, dancer, actress, producer, director and frequent game show panelist of the 1970s. She is best-known for her role as Karen Cooper Fairgate MacKenzie on the 1980s prime-time soap opera, Knots Landing. She also co-starred with Dean Jones in the 1968 Disney film, The Love Bug.
Lee was born Michelle Lee Dusick in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Sylvia Helen and Jack Dusick, a make-up artist. She is of Russian and Polish descent. Lee began her career on television in an episode of the late 1950s sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. She attended Alexander Hamilton High School where she became popular with her class, she in turn also attended the same high school as did Joel Siegel, Al Michaels and Michelle Phillips did. When she was 18, after graduation from high school, she auditioned for the Broadway play Vintage ’60. She soon began appearing in musicals, becoming a star on Broadway at the age of 19 in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in the role of “Rosemary”, opposite Robert Morse and Rudy Vallee, a role she reprised in the film version. She also appeared in more plays, such as the Los Angeles production of Jerry Herman’s Parade and the Broadway productions of Bravo Giovanni and The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.
After she sang and starred in the film version of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, she became known for her roles in the films The Comic and The Love Bug, the latter becoming the biggest blockbuster movie of 1969. That same year, she starred in a special television production of the Jerome Kern?Otto Harbach musical, Roberta, in which she sang “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”. After the birth of her son, she worked infrequently until accepting a role on Broadway in Seesaw, which netted her a Tony Award nomination in 1974. After her mother’s death, she stopped working, wanting to spend time with her only son.
In 1974, Lee starred in the pilot episode for proposed CBS sitcom The Michele Lee Show. She would play Michele Burton, a clerk in a hotel newsstand, with support from Stephen Collins. Only the pilot episode was aired and the series did not eventuate.
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress. She made her screen début in 1980, but first garnered mainstream attention with her appearance in Scarface. She rose to prominence during the late 1980s and early 1990s, during which time she gave a series of critically-acclaimed performances in the films Dangerous Liaisons, Married to the Mob, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Russia House, Frankie and Johnny, Love Field, and The Age of Innocence, as well as appearing as Catwoman, the feline anti-heroine of Batman Returns. Pfeiffer has been nominated for an Academy Award three times: Best Supporting Actress for Dangerous Liaisons, Best Actress for The Fabulous Baker Boys, and Best Actress for Love Field. She won a Golden Globe Award for The Fabulous Baker Boys, a BAFTA Award for Dangerous Liaisons, and the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Love Field. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard.
Pfeiffer appeared on the cover of People’s first “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” issue in 1990, and again in 1999, having made the list a record six times during the decade.
Pfeiffer was born in Santa Ana, California, the second of four children of Richard Pfeiffer, a heating and air-conditioning contractor, and Donna, a homemaker. She has one elder brother, Rick, and two younger sisters, Dedee Pfeiffer and Lori Pfeiffer, both actresses. Her father was of German, Dutch, and Irish descent, and her mother was of Swiss and Swedish ancestry. The family moved to Midway City, California, where Pfeiffer spent her childhood. She attended Fountain Valley High School and graduated within three years and worked as a check-out girl at Vons supermarket. She then attended Golden West College where she was a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. After a short stint training to be a court stenographer, she decided upon an acting career, and entered the Miss Orange County Beauty Pageant in 1978, and the Miss Los Angeles contest later that year, after which she was signed by a Hollywood agent who appeared on the judging panel. Moving to Los Angeles, she began to audition for commercials and bit parts in films.
Mickey Gilley
Mickey Leroy Gilley is an American country music singer and musician. Although he started out singing straight-up country and western material in the 1970s, he moved towards a more pop-friendly sound in the 1980s, bringing him further success on not just the country charts, but the pop charts as well. Among his biggest hits are “Room Full of Roses,” “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time,” and the remake of the Soul hit “Stand by Me”. He is also the cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl McVoy, Jim Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart.
He was born to Mr. and Mrs. A.S. Gilley in Natchez, the seat of Adams County in western Mississippi. For many years, Gilley lived in the shadow of his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock and roll singer and musician in the 1950s. The two as children grew up close by each other; Gilley lived just across the Mississippi River from Louisiana where Lewis grew up. Gilley, Lewis, and another cousin Jimmy Swaggart played piano together as children. This is when Gilley first learned to play the piano. Together, they all sang boogie-woogie and Gospel music, however, Gilley didn’t consider himself a professional singer until Jerry Lee hit the top of the charts in the 1950s. Mickey cut a few singles on his own in late 1950s and played sessions in New Orleans with producer Huey Meaux. In 1958, he had a record “Call Me Shorty” on the Dot label and it sold well. In the 1960s, he played at many clubs and bars, getting a following at the Nesadel Club in Houston, Texas. In 1967, Paula Records released Gilley’s first album called Down the Line and the following, he had a minor hit from the album called “Now I Can Live Again”.
In 1970, Gilley opened up his first club in Pasadena, Texas, called Gilley’s Club, replacing the club that was there called Shelley’s Club. The club later became known as the “world’s biggest honky tonk.” He owned “Gilley’s Club” with former owner of Shelley’s Club named Sherwood Cryer, who asked Gilley to re-open the bar with him. The club portion of Gilley’s burned in 1990, while the rodeo arena portion was razed in 2005 to make way for a school.
In 1974, Gilley recorded a song that originally was only supposed to be recorded for fun entitled “Room Full of Roses”, written by Tim Spencer of the Sons of the Pioneers, which was a one-time hit for George Morgan. The song was released by Astro Records that year, and then Playboy Records got a hold of the single, and got national distribution for “Room Full of Roses”. From then on, Gilley was signed to Playboy Records working with his long-time friend Eddie Kilroy. “Room Full of Roses” became the song that put Gilley on national radar, hitting the very top of the Country charts that year, as well as making it to #100 on the pop music charts. “Room Full of Roses” today remains as one of his signature songs.