25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Martin Sheen

October 25, 2019

Ramón Antonio Gerard Estévez, better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an actor known for his performances as Captain Willard in the film Apocalypse Now, Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the film Gettysburg, President Josiah Bartlet in the television series The West Wing, and as the voice of The Illusive Man in the video game Mass Effect 2. He has worked with some of cinema's prominent directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Attenborough, Terrence Malick and Mike Nichols.

With the critical acclaim he has received as an actor, Sheen has become known as an activist. Born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, United States, with Irish and Galician parents, Sheen is also an Irish citizen.

He is the father of actors Emilio Estévez, Ramón Estévez, Carlos Irwin Estévez, and Renée Estévez, and is the brother of Joe Estévez, also an actor.

Sheen was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Mary Ann and Francisco Estévez, who was a factory worker/machinery inspector at the National Cash Register Company at the time. Both parents were immigrants, his mother was born in Borrisokane, County Tipperary, Ireland and his father in Parderrubias, Galicia, Spain. After moving to Dayton, Estévez worked for several decades for the National Cash Register Company. Sheen grew up on Brown Street in the South Park neighborhood, one of 10 siblings. He attended Chaminade High School and was raised as a Roman Catholic. Sheen eventually adopted his stage name in honor of the Catholic archbishop and theologian, Fulton J. Sheen.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Martha Raye

October 25, 2019

Martha Raye was an American comic actress and standards singer who performed in movies, and later on television.

Raye’s life as a singer and comedy performer began very early in her childhood. She was born at St. James Hospital, in Butte, Montana as Margy Reed, where her Irish immigrant parents, Peter F. Reed and Maybelle Hooper, were performing at a local vaudeville theatre as “Reed and Hooper”. Two days after Martha was born, her mother was already back on stage, and Martha first appeared in their act when she was three years old. She performed with her brother, Bud, and soon the two children became such a highlight that the act was renamed “Margie and Bud.” Some show business insiders speculated that the Judy Garland song from A Star Is Born, “I was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho” was inspired by Raye’s beginnings.

Raye continued performing from that point on and even attended the Professional Children’s School in New York City, but she received so little formal schooling, getting only as far as the fifth grade, that she often had to have scripts and other written documents read to her by others.

In the early 1930s, Raye was a band vocalist with the Paul Ash and Boris Morros orchestras. She made her first film appearance in 1934 in a band short titled A Nite in the Nite Club. In 1936, she was signed for comic roles by Paramount Pictures, and made her first picture for Paramount. Her first feature film was Rhythm on the Range with crooner Bing Crosby. Over the next 26 years, she would eventually appear with many of the leading comics of her day, including Joe E. Brown, Bob Hope, W. C. Fields, Abbott and Costello, Charlie Chaplin, and Jimmy Durante. She joined the USO soon after the US entered World War II.

25 Oct 2019
Live Performance Permalink

Martha Scott

October 25, 2019

Martha Ellen Scott was an American actress best known for her roles as mother of the lead character in numerous films and television shows.

Scott was born in Jamesport, Missouri, the daughter of Letha and Walter Scott, an engineer and garage owner; her mother was a second-cousin of U.S. President William McKinley. Scott became interested in acting in high school. She got her start acting in shortened Shakespeare productions at the Century of Progress world’s fair in Chicago. Scott eventually went to New York City, where she was cast as the original Emily in the Broadway production of Our Town. Her film debut in Our Town in 1940 saw her receiving an Academy Award nomination Best Actress for her luminous and critically acclaimed performance as Emily Webb. Scott’s co-star was William Holden in the role of George Gibbs. Unfortunately the censors sanitized the film’s last scene after Emily has died, and allowed her to live to make for a happy ending.

She appeared in films such as The Howards of Virginia, Cheers for Miss Bishop, One Foot in Heaven, The Desperate Hours, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Airport 1975 and The Turning Point.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Marlo Thomas

October 25, 2019

Margaret Julia ?Marlo? Thomas is an American actress, producer, and social activist known for her starring role on the TV series That Girl. She also serves as National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Thomas was born in Detroit, Michigan, the eldest child and elder daughter of Lebanese-American comedian Danny Thomas and his wife, the former Rose Marie Cassaniti. Her brother, Tony Thomas, is a television and film producer, and her sister, Terre Thomas, is a former actress.

Marlo Thomas was raised in Beverly Hills, California. Her parents called her Margo as a child, though she soon became known as Marlo, she told The New York Times, because of her childhood mispronunciation of the nickname. She attended Marymount High School in Los Angeles. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree?”I wanted a piece of paper that said I was qualified to do something,” she said?and was a member of the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.

Thomas began appearing as a regular on The Joey Bishop Show. She followed the series with guest shots on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Ben Casey, My Favorite Martian, and Bonanza, but it was not until 1966 that she hit her professional stride as aspiring New York actress Ann Marie on the ABC sitcom That Girl. The series ran until 1971, garnering her a Golden Globe Award and four Emmy nominations.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Marlon Brando

October 25, 2019

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American actor who performed for over half a century.

He was perhaps best known for his roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and his Academy Award-winning performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, both directed by Elia Kazan, and his Academy Award-winning performance as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. In middle age he also played Colonel Walter Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, also directed by Coppola, and delivered an Academy Award-nominated performance as Paul in Last Tango in Paris. Brando had a significant impact on film acting. He was the foremost example of the “method” acting style, and became notorious for his “mumbling” diction, but his mercurial performances were highly regarded and he is now considered one of the greatest American film actors of the twentieth century. Director Martin Scorsese said of him, “He is the marker. There’s ‘before Brando’ and ‘after Brando’.'” Actor Jack Nicholson once said, “When Marlon dies, everybody moves up one.”

Brando was also an activist, supporting many issues, notably the American Civil Rights and various American Indian Movements.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Marsha Hunt

October 25, 2019

Marsha Hunt is an American film, theater, and television actress who was blacklisted by Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s.

Marsha Hunt attended the Theodore Irving School of Dramatics during her high school years. She was also a very good singer, and a model, before Paramount Pictures signed her to a contract in 1934. At 18 years of age, she made her film debut in The Virginia Judge.

In 1938, she married film director Jerry Hopper; they were divorced in 1943. Three years later, in 1946, she married television and film writer Robert Presnell Jr., which lasted until his death in June 1986.

During the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Hunt signed a number of petitions promoting liberal ideals. She was also a member of the Committee for the First Amendment. Because of this association, her name appeared in the pamphlet Red Channels. Although she and her husband, Robert Presnell, were never called before the House Un-American Activities Commission, like Charlie Chaplin, their names were put on the blacklist, and they found it extremely difficult to find work. On October 27, 1947, she flew with a group of about 30 actors, directors, writers, and filmmakers, to Washington D.C. to protest the actions of Congress. When she returned to Hollywood three days later, things had changed. She was asked to denounce her activities if she wanted to find more work–but she refused. For her, the issue here was not Communism, but freedom of speech, privacy of opinion, freedom of advocacy, and freedom of democracy. She did keep working until the publication of Red Channels, but afterwards it became very hard.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Marshall Neilan

October 25, 2019

Marshall Ambrose Neilan was an American motion picture actor, screenwriter, film director, and producer.

Born in San Bernardino, California, Neilan was known by most as “Mickey.” Following the death of his father, the eleven-year-old Mickey Neilan had to give up on schooling to work at whatever work he could find in order to help support his mother. As a teenager, he began acting in bit parts in live theatre, and in 1910 he got a job driving Biograph Studios executives around Los Angeles there to determine the suitability of the West Coast as a place for a permanent studio.

Neilan made his film debut as part of the acting cast on the American Film Manufacturing Company Western The Stranger at Coyote. Hired by Kalem Studios for their Western film production facility in Santa Monica, Neilan was first cast opposite Ruth Roland. Described as confident, but egotistical at times, Neilan’s talent saw him directing films within a year of joining Kalem. After acting in more than seventy silent film shorts for Kalem and directing more than thirty others, Neilan was hired by the Selig Polyscope Company then Bison Motion Pictures and Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. In 1915, Neilan was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Directors Association along with directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Allan Dwan, and William Desmond Taylor.

At the end of 1916, Neilan was hired by Mary Pickford Films where he directed Pickford in several productions including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Little Princess in 1917, plus Stella Maris, Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, M’Liss in 1918, and Daddy-Long-Legs in 1919.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Mark Robson

October 25, 2019

Mark Robson was a Canadian-born film editor, film director and producer in Hollywood.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, he moved to the United States at a young age. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles then found work in the prop department at 20th Century Fox studios. He eventually went to work at RKO Pictures where he began training as a film editor. In 1940 he worked as an assistant to Robert Wise on the editing of Citizen Kane in addition to several other films. Both he and Wise benefited tremendously from producer and screenwriter Val Lewton, who promoted Robson from film editor to production assistant and later as director. In 1943, at the insistence of Lewton, Robson assisted Lewton and famed director Jacques Tourneur in a series of low-budget horror films produced by Val Lewton that today are regarded as some of RKO’s best, including Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. Later, Lewton was instrumental in promoting Robson to the director’s chair for films such as The Seventh Victim, Robson’s first directing credit, and the troubled Isle of the Dead. His success at RKO lead to work on major film projects and in 1949 he was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures for his work on the film noir drama Champion. That same year, he directed the popular romance My Foolish Heart and Home of the Brave, one of the first films to deal with the issue of racism. Robson briefly brought back his old mentor Val Lewton with fellow protege Robert Wise in a partnership for film and television production, only to drop the ailing Lewton without explanation a few months later. Robson was nominated by the DGA again for the 1955 war drama The Bridges at Toko-Ri, starring William Holden and Grace Kelly.

In 1958, Mark Robson was nominated for an Academy Award for Directing for the major box office success Peyton Place and again the following year for directing Ingrid Bergman in the acclaimed film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. For these films he also received his third and fourth Directors Guild of America nomination. Robson also produced a number of films which he also directed including Von Ryan’s Express in 1965. He directed 1967’s Valley of the Dolls, a film panned by the critics but a success at the box office. In 1974 he directed the blockbuster Earthquake, the film that introduced “Sensurround”.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Mark Sandrich

October 25, 2019

Mark Sandrich was a Jewish American film director, writer and producer.

One of the most gifted and least heralded directors of the 1930s and early 1940s, Sandrich was an engineering student at Columbia University when he started the movie business by accident. When visiting a friend on a film set, he saw that the director had a problem in setting up a shot; Sandrich offered his advice. It worked. He then entered into the movies in the prop department, and became a director specializing in several comedy shorts in 1927. He then made his first feature the next year, but returned to shorts after the sound arrival. In 1933 he directed the Academy Award-winning short, So This Is Harris!. He later returned to feature films, most notably comedies, starring the team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey in Hips, Hips, Hooray!. In 1934, Sandrich soon got his first directing assignment on the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical Gay Divorce, which proved a success.

The following year, he directed what is widely regarded as the best movie ever made by the legendary dance team, Top Hat, which excelled in every department, including music and choreography. It was all pulled together seamlessly by Sandrich. After that, several other movies such as Follow the Fleet, Shall We Dance, and Carefree followed. In 1940, Sandrich left RKO for Paramount, which offered him a chance to be not only a director but as well as a producer. He made other several successful films in this capacity, including two with Jack Benny, Buck Benny Rides Again and Love Thy Neighbor, both released in 1940, and the romantic comedy Skylark, starring Claudette Colbert and Ray Milland. However, while all these were hits, it was Holiday Inn in 1942 starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, with music by Irving Berlin that showed Sandrich at his best. The musical/comedy actually started on the eve of America’s entry into World War II. It featured sufficient serious overtones to capture the mood of the time, and showed Crosby and Astaire to brilliant advantage as performers who are rivals for the same woman; and it introduced the song “White Christmas”, highlighted by the crooner Crosby which remained the biggest selling popular song in history for fifty-two years. So Proudly We Hail! was a Sandrich-produced and directed adaptation of the hit play. It was extremely popular and successful, and featured a pair of performers ? Adrian Booth and George Reeves — whom Sandrich had intended to bring to stardom after the war. However, it wasn’t to be.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Mark Serrurier

October 25, 2019

Mark Serrurier is the son of Dutch-born electrical engineer, Iwan Serrurier, who created the Moviola in 1924 which became the technology used for film editing. Mark was a graduate of Caltech and went on to work on designs for the Mt. Palomar 200