25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Jeff Chandler

October 25, 2019

Jeff Chandler was an American film actor and singer in the 1950s.

Chandler was born Ira Grossel to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Anna and Phillip Grossel. He attended Erasmus Hall High School, the alma mater of many stage and film personalities. Later, he took a drama course at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in New York. He worked in radio briefly and spent two years in stock companies. He served in World War II, mostly in the Aleutians. His enlistment record for the Cavalry in November 18, 1941 gave his height as six foot four inches and his weight as 210 pounds. After being discharged from the military, he was a busy radio actor both in drama and comedy. His first film appearance was in Johnny O’Clock. In the 1950s, Chandler became a star in western and action movies. His first important role was in Sword In the Desert, as an Israeli freedom fighter. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Cochise in Broken Arrow. The first of three screen appearances as the legendary Apache chief, he repeated the role in The Battle at Apache Pass and in a cameo in Taza, Son of Cochise. He was the first actor nominated for an Academy Award for portraying a Native American. His agent was Doovid Barskin of The Barskin Agency in the late 50’s.

During the latter part of the decade and into the early 1960s, Chandler became a top leading man. His sex appeal, prematurely gray hair, and ruggedly handsome tanned features put him into drama and costume movies. Among the movies of this period are Female on the Beach, Foxfire, Away All Boats, Toy Tiger, Drango, The Tattered Dress, Man in the Shadow, A Stranger in My Arms, The Jayhawkers!, Thunder in the Sun, and Return to Peyton Place .

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.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Jerry Buss

October 25, 2019

Gerald Hatten “Jerry” Buss M.S., Ph.D. is the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers professional basketball team along with other professional sports franchises in Southern California. He was announced as a member of the 2010 induction class of the Basketball Hall of Fame on April 5, 2010, and was formally enshrined as a contributor to the sport on August 13 of that year.

Buss worked his way through the University of Wyoming, graduating with a B.S. degree in two and a half years in 1953. He moved to Los Angeles and attended the University of Southern California, where he earned a M.S. and Ph.D. in physical chemistry by age 24.

Buss started as a chemist for the Bureau of Mines ; he then briefly worked in the aerospace industry and was on the faculty of USC’s chemistry department. He originally went into real estate in order to provide an income so he could continue teaching. His first investment in the 1960s was $1,000 in a West Los Angeles apartment building. Finding great success, he pursued real estate full time. In 1979 Jerry purchased Pickfair Mansion in Beverly Hills from the estate of Mary Pickford. He was also the co-owner of a real estate company called Mariani-Buss Associates with his long time business partner Frank Mariani.

Buss became an owner in World Team Tennis. He purchased the Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA along with the Los Angeles Kings hockey team of the NHL, The Forum, and a large ranch from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979. The purchase price, $67.5 million, made it the largest transaction in sports history at that time. Buss later sold the Kings, retaining ownership of the Lakers and The Forum. He then reached a major advertising agreement with Great Western Bank for the naming rights to The Forum, resulting in the official name of the building being changed to the Great Western Forum.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Jerry Colonna

October 25, 2019

Gerardo Luigi “Jerry” Colonna was an Italian-American comedian, singer and songwriter, remembered best as the zaniest of Bob Hope’s sidekicks on Hope’s popular radio shows and films of the 1940s and 1950s.

With his pop-eyed facial expressions and walrus-sized handlebar mustache, Colonna was known for singing loudly “in a comic caterwaul,” according to Raised on Radio author Gerald Nachman, and for his catch phrase, “Who’s Yehudi?”, uttered after many an old joke, although it usually had nothing to do with the joke. The line was believed to be named for violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin, and the search for Yehudi became a running gag on the Hope show.

Colonna played a range of nitwitted characters, the best remembered of which was a moronic professor. Nachman wrote:

Colonna started his career as a trombonist in orchestras and dance bands in and around his native Boston; he can be heard with Joe Herlihy’s orchestra on discs recorded for Edison Records in the late 1920s. During the 1930s, Colonna played with the CBS house orchestra, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, and developed a reputation for prankishness. His off-stage antics were so infamous that CBS nearly fired him on more than one occasion. Fred Allen, then on CBS, gave Colonna periodic guest slots, and a decade later he joined the John Scott Trotter band on Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Jerry Dunphy

October 25, 2019

Jerry Dunphy was an American television news anchor in the Los Angeles/Southern California media market. He was best known for his catchy intro “From the desert to the sea, to all of Southern California, a good evening.”

After serving as a pilot in World War II, Dunphy began his broadcast television career in 1953. He was the news director/anchor at then-CBS owned-and-operated WXIX in Milwaukee. Dunphy also was a sports reporter at another CBS O&O, WBBM-TV, in Chicago. Then in 1960, Dunphy took over the anchor chair at the Los Angeles CBS O&O station KNXT, where he anchored Los Angeles’ most popular newscast later titled “The Big News”, a program that often attracted a quarter of Los Angeles television owners, ratings unheard of in the market. He was still popular when fired in 1975, yet KNXT sought to adopt a faster paced, “Eyewitness News” type format. It was then when Jerry joined KABC-TV, bringing it to the top of the ratings, making it Southern California’s news leader. Since Dunphy’s unceremonious firing, Channel 2 has never recovered in the ratings. Dunphy left KABC-TV in 1989 and joined the upstart KCAL-TV as one of the pioneering anchors of the three-hour primetime news format, “Prime 9 News”. He returned to KCBS-TV in 1995 and remained until 1997 as an anchorman, and rejoined KCAL-TV in 1997, where he remained until his death.

Dunphy was one of the first newscasters to interview President Richard Nixon after his resignation in 1974. He would later sit down with Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. Dunphy also performed regular cameos in L.A.-based films including Night of the Lepus, Oh God!, Short Cuts, The Jerky Boys and Independence Day, and is considered to be the inspiration for two fictional television characters: Kent Brockman on The Simpsons, and Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Dunphy was also a songwriter. One of his songs was called, appropriately, “From the Desert to the Sea” and was recorded by country music star TG Shepherd

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Jean Parker

October 25, 2019

Jean Parker was an American movie actress. Born as Lois Mae Green in Deer Lodge, Montana, she appeared in 70 movies from 1932 through 1966. She was discovered by Ida Koverman, secretary to MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, after she saw a poster featuring Parker portraying Father Time. She attended Pasadena schools and graduated from John Muir High School. Her original aspirations were in the fine arts and illustration.

She had a successful career at MGM, RKO and Columbia including important roles such as the tragic Beth in the original Little Women, among many other film appearances including Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day and Gabriel Over the White House; Sequoia; The Ghost Goes West, opposite Robert Donat; and Rasputin and the Empress, with fellow players, the Barrymore siblings in the only movie they all made together. In 1939, she starred opposite Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in RKO’s The Flying Deuces.

Parker stayed active in film throughout the 1940s, playing opposite Lon Chaney in Dead Man’s Eyes, and a variety of other films. Parker managed her own airport and flying service with then-husband Doug Dawson in Palm Springs, California until shortly after the start of World War II. During the war, she toured many of the veteran hospitals throughout the U.S. and performed on radio. In the 1950s, Parker co-starred opposite Edward G. Robinson in Black Tuesday; had a small but effective role in The Gunfighter which starred Gregory Peck and appeared with Randolph Scott and Angela Lansbury in the western Lawless Street. Her last film appearance was Apache Uprising, directed by A. C. Lyles.

Parker also appeared on Broadway. In 1949, she replaced Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday on Broadway and enjoyed a successful run in this classic. Parker also appeared on Broadway opposite Bert Lahr in the play Burlesque, did summer stock in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, was on tour in the play Candlelight and Loco, and performed on stage in other professional productions.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Jean Renoir

October 25, 2019

Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, the painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Renoir, My Father. Renoir was born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was also the brother of Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor; the uncle of Claude Renoir, a cinematographer; and the father of Alain Renoir, late professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

As a child, Renoir moved with his family to the south of France. He and the rest of the Renoir family were the subjects of many of his father’s paintings. His father’s financial success ensured that the young Renoir was educated at fashionable boarding schools, which, as he later wrote, he continually ran away from.

At the outbreak of World War I Renoir was serving in the French cavalry. Later, after receiving a bullet in his leg, he served as a reconnaissance pilot. His leg injury left him with a permanent limp, but allowed him to discover the cinema, where he used to recuperate with his leg elevated while watching the films of Charlie Chaplin and others. After the war, Renoir followed his father’s suggestion and tried his hand at making ceramics, but he soon set that aside to make films, inspired, in particular, by Erich von Stroheim’s work.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Recording Permalink

Jeanette MacDonald

October 25, 2019

Jeanette MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy. During the 1930s and 1940s she starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars, and recorded extensively, earning three gold records. She later appeared in grand opera, concerts, radio, and television. MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing grand opera to movie-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers.

Jeanette Anna MacDonald was born June 18, 1903 at her family’s Philadelphia home at 5123 Arch Street. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Daniel and Anna Wright MacDonald. At an early age, she graduated from tap dancing in front of the mirror to dancing lessons with Al White, and from imitating her mother’s opera records to singing lessons with Wassil Leps. She performed at church and school functions and began touring in kiddie shows. She was raised as a Christian Scientist.

In November 1919 MacDonald joined her older sister, Blossom, in New York and landed a job in the chorus of Ned Wayburn’s The Demi-Tasse Revue, a musical entertainment presented between films at the Capital Theatre on Broadway. In 1920 she appeared in two musicals, Jerome Kern’s Night Boat as a chorus replacement, and Irene on the road as the second female lead. In 1921 MacDonald played in Tangerine, as one of the “Six Wives.” In 1922 MacDonald was a featured singer in a Greenwich Village revue, Fantastic Fricassee. Good press notices brought her a role in The Magic Ring. MacDonald played the second female lead in this long-running musical which starred Mitzi Hajos. In 1925 MacDonald again had the second female lead opposite Queenie Smith in Tip Toes, a George Gershwin hit show. The following year found her still in a second female lead in Bubblin’ Over, a musical version of Brewster’s Millions. MacDonald finally landed the starring role in Yes, Yes, Yvette. Planned as a sequel to producer H.H. Frazee’s No, No, Nanette, the show toured extensively but failed to please the critics when it arrived on Broadway. MacDonald also played the lead in her next two plays: Sunny Days, her first show for producers Lee and J.J. Shubert, for which she received rave reviews, and Angela, which the critics panned. Her last play was Boom Boom, with her name above the title. While MacDonald was appearing in Angela, film star Richard Dix spotted her and had her screen-tested for his film Nothing but the Truth. The Shuberts wouldn?t let her out of her contract to appear in the film, which starred Dix and Helen Kane, the ?Boop-boop-a-doop girl?. In 1929, famed film director Ernst Lubitsch was looking through old screen tests of Broadway performers and spotted MacDonald. He cast her as the leading lady in his first sound film, The Love Parade, which starred the Continental sensation Maurice Chevalier.