25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Kim Basinger

October 25, 2019

Kimila Ann “Kim” Basinger is an American actress and former fashion model.

She is known for her portrayals of Domino Petachi, the Bond girl in Never Say Never Again, and Vicki Vale, the female lead in Batman. Basinger received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture nomination for her work in The Natural. She won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in L.A. Confidential. She also appeared in 9½ Weeks, and 8 Mile. Basinger was born in Athens, Georgia. Her father, Don Basinger, was a big band musician and loan manager who landed in Normandy on D-Day. Her mother, Ann, was a model, actress, and swimmer who appeared in Esther Williams films. The third of five children, she has two brothers, Mick and Skip, and two sisters, Ashley and Barbara. Basinger’s ancestry includes German, Swedish and Cherokee, and she was raised a Methodist.

When Basinger was 16, she started modeling by winning the Athens Junior Miss contest. She then won the title ?Junior Miss Georgia?. She competed in the national Junior Miss pageant and was offered a modeling contract with Ford Modeling Agency. She turned it down in favor of singing and acting, but reconsidered and went to New York to become a Ford model.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording, Television Permalink

Kim Hunter

October 25, 2019

Kim Hunter was an American film, theatre, and television actress. She won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, each as Best Supporting Actress, for her performance as Stella Kowalski in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire. Decades later she received a Daytime Emmy Award for her work on the long running soap The Edge of Night.

Hunter was born Janet Cole in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Grace Lind, who was trained as a concert pianist, and Donald

Cole, a refrigeration engineer. She attended Miami Beach High School.

Hunter’s first film role was in the film noir The Seventh Victim in 1943. She performed in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire, playing the role of Stella Kowalski. She appeared in the 1951 film version, for which she won both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Kim Novak

October 25, 2019

Kim Novak is an American actress. She is best known for her performance in the classic 1958 film Vertigo. Novak retired from acting in 1991 and has since become an accomplished artist of oil paintings. She currently lives with her veterinarian husband on a ranch in Eagle Point, Oregon, where they raise livestock.

Kim Novak was born Marilyn Pauline Novak in Chicago, Illinois, to Joseph Novak and Blanche Marie Novak. Her parents were second-generation Czech immigrants. Her father was a railroad clerk and former teacher and her mother was also a former teacher.

While attending Farragut High Academy, she won a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago. After leaving school, she began a career modeling teen fashions for a local department store. She later received a scholarship at a modeling academy and continued to model part-time. She worked as an elevator operator, a sales clerk and a dental assistant.

After a job touring the country as a spokesman for a refrigerator manufacturer, “Miss Deepfreeze,” Novak moved to Los Angeles, where she continued to find work as a model.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Kenny Loggins

October 25, 2019

Kenneth Clark “Kenny” Loggins is an American singer and songwriter known best for “soft rock” and “adult contemporary” music beginning during the 1970s. Originally a part of the duo Loggins and Messina, he became a solo artist and has written songs for other artists.

Loggins was born in Everett, Washington and raised in Alhambra, California, where he formed a band called The Second Helping. This band released three singles during 1968 and 1969 on Viva. Greg Shaw described the efforts as “excellent punky folk-pop records” that were written by Loggins who was likely to be the bandleader and singer as well; Shaw included “Let Me In” on both Highs in the Mid-Sixties, Volume 2 and the Pebbles, Volume 9 CD.

During his early twenties, he was part of the band Gator Creek with Mike Deasy. An early version of “Danny’s Song” was included in a record on Mercury Records.

Loggins continued his career during the 1970s. After attracting the attention of fellow singer-songwriter Jim Messina, the two began a duo career as Loggins and Messina, which lasted until 1976. During 1977, Loggins produced his first solo album, Celebrate Me Home, which included the successful song “I Believe In Love,” sung originally by Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born. Nightwatch, a popular album released during 1978, included the success “Whenever I Call You Friend”, a duet with Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac, though co-written with Melissa Manchester. He followed this during 1979 with Keep the Fire.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Kenny Rogers

October 25, 2019

Kenneth Donald Rogers, better known as Kenny Rogers is an American country music singer-songwriter, photographer, record producer, actor and entrepreneur. He has charted more than 120 hit singles across various music genres and topping the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone.

Two of his albums, The Gambler and Kenny, are featured in the About.com poll of "The 200 Most Influential Country Albums Ever". He was voted the "Favorite Singer of All-Time" in a 1986 joint poll by readers of both USA Today and People. He has received hundreds of awards for both his music and charity work. These include AMAs, Grammys, ACMs and CMAs, as well as a lifetime achievement award for a career spanning six decades in 2003.

Later success includes the 2006 album release, Water & Bridges, an across the board hit, that peaked at #5 in the Billboard Country Albums sales charts, also charting high in the Billboard 200. The first single from the album, "I Can't Unlove You," was also a chart hit. Remaining a popular entertainer around the world, the following year he completed a tour of the United Kingdom and the Ireland telling BBC Radio 2 DJ Steve Wright, his favorite hit was "The Gambler". He has also acted in a variety of movies and television shows, most notably the title roles in Kenny Rogers as The Gambler and the MacShayne series as well as his appearance on the Muppet Show. Rogers currently resides in Nicholson, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

Rogers was born "Kenneth Ray Rogers" in Houston, Texas in 1938, the fourth of seven children born to Lucille, a nurse, and Edward Floyd Rogers, a carpenter. Rogers graduated from Jefferson Davis High School in Houston. According to the Texas birth records, his middle given name is Ray and he is sometimes credited in his film roles as "Kenneth Ray Rogers".

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Kent Taylor

October 25, 2019

Kent Taylor was an American actor. Born Louis William Weiss in Nashua, Iowa, Taylor appeared in more than 110 films, the bulk of them B-movies in the 1930s and 1940s, although he also had roles in more prestigious studio releases, including I’m No Angel, Death Takes a Holiday, Payment on Demand, and Track the Man Down. In the 1950s, with his movie career on the decline and television production on the upswing, he played the title role in 58 episodes of the detective series Boston Blackie and the lead in 39 episodes of ABC’s The Rough Riders. Other small screen credits include My Little Margie, Tales of Wells Fargo, Zorro, Bat Masterson, Peter Gunn, and Hawaiian Eye. The last years of his career were spent in slasher and horror films with titles like Satan’s Sadists, Blood of Ghastly Horror, I Spit on Your Corpse, and Hell’s Bloody Devils.

Taylor is interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Kermit the Frog

October 25, 2019

Kermit the Frog is puppeteer Jim Henson’s most famous Muppet creation, first introduced in 1955. He is the main protagonist of many Muppet projects, most notably as the host of The Muppet Show, and has appeared in various sketches on Sesame Street, in commercials and in public service announcements over the years. Kermit was performed by Henson until his death in 1990. Since then, Kermit has been performed by Steve Whitmire. He was voiced by Frank Welker in Muppet Babies and occasionally in other animation projects.

Kermit performed the hit single “The Rainbow Connection” in 1979 for The Muppet Movie, the first feature-length film featuring Henson’s Muppets. The song reached #25 on the Billboard Hot 100. Kermit’s iconic look and voice have been recognizable worldwide since, and in 2006, the character was credited as the author of Before You Leap: a frog’s eye view of life’s greatest lessons, which is an “autobiography” told from the perspective of the character himself.

An early version of Kermit appeared in 1955, in a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV’s Sam and Friends. The prototype Kermit was created from a turquoise ladies’ coat that Henson’s mother had thrown into a waste bin, and two ping pong balls for eyes.

Initially, Kermit was seen as a lizard-like creature. He subsequently made a number of television appearances before his status as a frog was established, which was shortly before Sesame Street began. His collar was added at the time to make him seem more froglike and to conceal the seam between his head and body.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Kevin Bacon

October 25, 2019

Kevin Norwood Bacon is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Friday the 13th, Hollow Man, Tremors and Frost/Nixon.

Bacon has won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, was nominated for an Emmy Award, and was named by The Guardian” as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

In 2003, Bacon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Bacon, one of six children, was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Ruth Hilda, taught elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Bacon, was a well-respected architect and a prominent Philadelphian who had been Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for many years. At 16, Bacon attended the Pennsylvania Governors School for the Arts, a state-funded five-week arts program which helped solidify Bacon’s passion for the arts.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Ken Niles

October 25, 2019

Ken Niles was a radio announcer. He was married to Nadia Niles, and had two children named Kenneth Niles and Denise Niles.

Niles played an important role in the development of radio drama throughout the 1920s. During the 1930s, he produced and assisted with the hosting of actress-cum-gossip columnist Louella Parsons’ talent and interview program “Hollywood Hotel.” Parsons and Niles later appeared in a 1937 feature film based on the show. Niles subsequently narrated, or served as announcer, in several other feature films. He served as commercial announcer and foil on several series sponsored by Camel Cigarettes, notably that starring Abbott and Costello. Niles was frequently paired in comedy skits opposite Elvia Allman as his fictitious wife Mrs. Niles.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Kenny Baker

October 25, 2019

Kenneth Laurence “Kenny” Baker was an American singer/actor who first gained notice as the featured singer on Jack Benny’s radio shows during the 1930s.

At the height of his radio fame, and after leaving the Benny show in 1939, he appeared in seventeen film musicals including: and later co-starred with Mary Martin in the original Broadway production of Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s One Touch of Venus. He returned to radio as a regular performer on Fred Allen’s Texaco Star Theater program of 1940-1942. Baker also recorded a number of hymn albums for his church. After retiring from performing in the early 1950s, he became a Christian Science practitioner and motivational speaker.