25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Jerry Lewis

October 25, 2019

In memory of comedic icon and Walk of Famer Jerry Lewis, flowers were placed on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday, August 21, 2017 at 1:15 PM PDT. The star in category of Motion Pictures is located at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard. “Keep them laughing Jerry!” Leron Gubler, President & CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce signed the card on behalf of the Hollywood Historic Trust and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, film producer, writer, film director and singer. He is best-known for his slapstick humor in stage, radio, screen, recording and television. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the comedy team of Martin and Lewis. In addition to the team's popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. As an innovative filmmaker, Lewis is credited with inventing the video assist system in cinematography. Lewis is also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Lewis has won several awards for lifetime achievements from The American Comedy Awards, The Golden Camera, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and The Venice Film Festival, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2005, he received the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which is the highest Emmy Award presented. On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

He was born Jerome Levitch in Newark, New Jersey, to Russian Jewish parents. His father, Daniel Levitch, was a Master of Ceremonies and vaudeville entertainer who used the professional name Danny Lewis, His mother, Rachel Levitch, was a piano player for a radio station.

Lewis started performing at age five and would often perform alongside his parents in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. By fifteen had developed his "Record Act", in which he exaggeratedly mimed the lyrics to songs on a phonograph. He used the professional name Joey Lewis, but soon changed it Jerry Lewis to avoid confusion with comedian Joe E. Lewis and heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. He graduated from Irvington High School in Irvington, New Jersey.

25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

Jerry Moss

October 25, 2019

Jerome S. “Jerry” Moss is an American recording executive, best known for being the co-founder of A&M Records, along with trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert.

After graduating with a degree in English from Brooklyn College and a stint in the Army, Moss began his music career by promoting “Sixteen Candles,” a hit for The Crests. In 1960 he moved to California where he teamed up with Alpert, forming Carnival Records in 1962 and running the company from an office in Alpert’s garage. Discovering that the name was already taken, they dubbed their new-found company A&M Records.

After the A&M label was purchased by PolyGram, the two men went on to form Almo Sounds in 1994, a new record label which continues to operate.

Moss and Herb Alpert were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 as nonperformers.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Jerry Weintraub

October 25, 2019

Jerry Weintraub is an American film producer and former chairman and CEO of United Artists. He now lives in Palm Desert, California.

Weintraub was born in Brooklyn and raised in The Bronx, New York, the son of Rose and Sam Weintraub. His father was a gem dealer. After several years at MCA, he left and formed his own personal management company. In the 1960s, he also co-founded the vocal group The Doodletown Pipers. Among the acts that Weintraub managed at this time were Joey Bishop, The Four Seasons, and singer Jane Morgan. His relationship with Morgan went from professional to personal and the two were married in 1965. They have four children together. For the past 20 years, however, Weintraub has been living with girlfriend Susie Elkins. Morgan and Weintraub never divorced and have remained friends.

Before turning to films, Weintraub’s largest entertainment success was as the personal manager of singer and actor John Denver whom he signed in 1970. When John Denver ended his business relationship due to Weintraub’s focus on other projects, Weintraub threw John out of his office and called John Denver a Nazi. John Denver would later write in his autobiography “. I’d bend my principles to support something he wanted of me. And of course every time you bend your principles – whether because you don’t want to worry about it, or because you’re afraid to stand up for fear of what you might lose – you sell your soul to the devil”.

Weintraub has also managed or promoted concerts for such musical acts as Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, Cuba Gooding, Sr. and the Main Ingredient, The Carpenters, Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, The Moody Blues and Zager & Evans.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Jess Marlow

October 25, 2019

In memory of Hollywood newscaster and Walk of Famer Jess Marlow, flowers were placed today on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday, August 4, 2014 at 2 p.m. PST. The star in the category of Radio is located at 6420 Hollywood Boulevard. “Rest in Peace among the stars, Jess Marlow!” The card was signed on behalf of the Hollywood Historic Trust and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Myron Jess Marlow is a retired Los Angeles television newsman. He hails from Salem, IL and was an anchor at KNTV-TV, KNBC-TV and KCBS-TV for over 40 years, beginning in the late 1950s. As an anchor, Marlow also delivered commentaries for KNBC and hosted the station's public affairs program "News Conference", He also filed reports from Vietnam and the Soviet Union.

Marlow began his TV career in 1958 at a station in Rock Island, IL. He came to KNBC in 1966 as a reporter and became an anchor in 1968. In 1980 he moved to KCBS and moved back to KNBC in 1986.

He retired in 1997, but returned to host "Life & Times", a Southern California public affairs program on KCET-TV in 2001 until he officially retired in 2003. His plan was to move to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

During his 37 years in Los Angeles, which began in 1966, he won numerous awards, including an Emmy and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 14 May 1999, located at 6420 Hollywood Blvd.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Jesse L. Lasky

October 25, 2019

Jesse Louis Lasky, Sr. was a pioneer Hollywood film producer. He was a key founder of Paramount Pictures with Adolph Zukor, and father of screenwriter Jesse L. Lasky Jr.

Born in San Francisco, California, he worked at a variety of jobs but began his entertainment career as a vaudeville performer that led to the motion picture business. His sister Blanche married Samuel Goldwyn and in 1913 Lasky and Goldwyn teamed with Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar Apfel to form the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. With limited funds, they rented a barn near Los Angeles where they made Hollywood’s first feature film, DeMille’s The Squaw Man. Known today as the Lasky-DeMille Barn, it is home to the Hollywood Heritage Museum.

In 1916 their company merged with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company to create the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. In 1920, Famous Players-Lasky built a large studio facility in Astoria, New York, now known as the Kaufman Astoria Studios. In 1927, Lasky was one of the thirty-six people who founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Financial problems arose within the industry as a result of the Great Depression and the Famous Players-Lasky Company went into receivership in 1933. Jesse Lasky then partnered with Mary Pickford to produce films but within a few years she dissolved their business relationship. Lasky then found work as a producer at one of the big studios until 1945 when he formed his own production company. He made his last film in 1951 and in 1957 published his autobiography, I Blow My Own Horn.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Jessica Dragonette

October 25, 2019

Jessica Dragonette was a singer who became popular on American radio and was active in the World War II effort.

Dragonette was born around 1900 in India. There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of birth; her birth records were reportedly destroyed in a fire. The Social Security Death Index cites 1900 as her year of birth. An orphan, she was raised in a convent.

She began singing on radio in 1926, and during her twenty-two year radio career, she helped to popularize operettas and semi-classical music. An admiring press dubbed her the “Princess of Song”, a nickname she later would use to publicize concert events. She was the star of the “Philco Hour” on NBC from 1927 to 1930. She then became the star of the Cities Service Concerts program, which she joined in 1930. By 1935, a listeners’ poll voted her radio’s most popular female vocalist. Dragonette sang in a segment of the film The Big Broadcast of 1936, on the condition that she have authority over the final cut on her performance. In the end she chose to have her part cut. In 1939, she provided the singing voice of “Princess Glory” in the full color animated motion picture Gulliver’s Travels.

In 1940 she was painted by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury, and the portrait now hangs at Georgian Court College, where Jessica went to school. Müller-Ury became a close friend of the singer, and painted her several times, his last being in 1946 in which she wears a gold fez. Muller-Ury also painted a portrait of Nadea Dragonette Loftus in 1942.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Jeffrey Hunter

October 25, 2019

Jeffrey Hunter was an American film and television actor.

Hunter was born Henry Herman McKinnies, Jr., in New Orleans, Louisiana, but raised after 1930 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitefish Bay High School. He began acting in local theater and radio in his early teens. He served in the United States Navy, in World War II, then studied theatre at Northwestern University, 1946?1949.

In 1950, while a graduate student in radio at the University of California, Los Angeles and appearing in a college play, he was spotted by talent scouts and offered a two-year motion picture contract by 20th Century-Fox that was eventually extended to 1959. He made his Hollywood debut in Fourteen Hours, had star billing by Red Skies of Montana, and first billing in Sailor of the King. A loan-out to co-star with John Wayne in the title roles of the now-classic western The Searchers began the first of three pictures he made with director John Ford; the other two being The Last Hurrah and Sergeant Rutledge .

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Jennifer Jones

October 25, 2019

Phylis Lee Isley better known as her stage name Jennifer Jones, was an American actress. A five-time Academy Award nominee, Jones won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Song of Bernadette. Jones was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the daughter of Flora Mae and Phillip Ross Isley. She was raised Roman Catholic and she attended Catholic school. Her parents toured the Midwest in a traveling tent show they owned and operated. Jones attended Monte Cassino Junior College in Tulsa and Northwestern University, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority before transferring to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in 1938. It was here she met and fell in love with fellow acting student Robert Walker. The couple married on January 2, 1939.

They returned to Tulsa for a 13-week radio program arranged by her father, and then made their way to Hollywood. Isley landed two small roles, first in a 1939 John Wayne western titled New Frontier, followed by a serial entitled Dick Tracy’s G-Men. In these two films, she was billed as ‘Phyllis Isley’. However, she failed a screen test for Paramount Pictures and decided to return to New York City.

While Walker found steady work in radio programs, Isley worked part-time modeling hats for the Powers Agency while looking for possible acting jobs. When she learned of auditions for the lead role in Claudia, Rose Franken?s hit play, she presented herself to David O. Selznick?s New York office but fled in tears after what she thought was a bad reading. Selznick, however, overheard her audition and was impressed enough to have his secretary call her back. Following an interview, she was signed to a seven-year contract.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Jerome Cowan

October 25, 2019

Jerome Palmer Cowan was an American film and television actor. At eighteen he joined a travelling stock company, shortly afterwards enlisting in the navy in World War I. After the war he returned to the stage and became a vaudeville headliner, then gained success on the New York stage. He was spotted by Samuel Goldwyn and was given a film contract, his first film being Beloved Enemy.

He appeared in over 100 films, but is probably best remembered for two roles in classic films: Miles Archer, the doomed private eye partner of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Thomas Mara, the hapless district attorney who has to prosecute Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street.

The New York-born actor also played Dagwood Bumstead’s boss Mr. Radcliffe in several installments of Columbia Pictures’ Blondie series. He also appeared in Deadline at Dawn, June Bride, and High Sierra.