25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Jane Powell

October 25, 2019

Jane Powell is an American singer, dancer and actress.

After rising to fame as a singer in her home state of Oregon, Powell was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer while still in her teens. Once there, the studio utilized her vocal, dancing and acting talents, casting her in such musicals as Royal Wedding, with Fred Astaire, A Date with Judy, with friend Elizabeth Taylor and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with Howard Keel. In the late 1950s, her film career slowed, only to be replaced with a busy theater and television career.

As of 2010, Powell lives with her fifth husband, former child star, Dickie Moore, in New York City and Connecticut, and is still active in television and theater.

The only child born to Paul E. Burce and Eileen Baker Burce in Portland, Oregon, Powell began dance lessons at the age of two. Powell was born a brunette, with straight hair. In an attempt to liken her appearance to Shirley Temple, Powell’s mother took her to get her first permanent the same year she began dance lessons. It wasn’t until she starred in Technicolor pictures that she became a blonde.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Jane Russell

October 25, 2019

Jane Russell is an American film actress and was one of Hollywood’s leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s.

Born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell in Bemidji, Minnesota, she was eldest child and only daughter of the five children of Roy William Russell and Geraldine Jacobi. Her parents were both born in North Dakota. Three of her grandparents were born in Canada, while her paternal grandmother was born in Germany. Her parents married in 1917. Her father was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and her mother was a former actress with a road troupe. Her parents spent the early years of their marriage in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. For her birth her mother temporarily moved back to the U.S. to ensure she was born a U.S. citizen. Later the family moved to the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. They lived in Burbank in 1930 and her father worked as an office manager at a soap manufacturing plant.

Russell’s mother arranged for her to take piano lessons. In addition to music, she was interested in drama and participated in stage productions at Van Nuys High School. Her early ambition was to be a designer of some kind, until the death of her father at forty-six, when she decided to work as a receptionist after graduation. She also modeled for photographers and, at the urging of her mother, studied drama and acting with Max Reinhardt’s Theatrical Workshop and with famed Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaya.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Jane Seymour

October 25, 2019

Jane Seymour, OBE is an English actress, best-known as a Bond girl, in the 1973 James Bond film, Live and Let Die, and the star of the 1990s American television series, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and its telefilm sequels.

Seymour was born Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg in Hayes, Middlesex, England, the daughter of Mieke, a nurse, and John Benjamin Frankenberg, an obstetrician. Her father was an English Jew whose family was from Poland, and her mother was a Dutch-born Protestant who was a prisoner of war during WWII. Seymour was educated at the independent The Arts Educational School in Tring, Hertfordshire, in England. She took on the stage name “Jane Seymour”, also the name of King Henry VIII’s third wife, at the age of 17.

Seymour has had a long acting career in both film and television, beginning in 1969 with an uncredited role in Richard Attenborough’s film version of Oh! What a Lovely War. Soon afterward, she married Attenborough’s son, Michael Attenborough. Her first major film role was as Lillian Stein, a Jewish woman seeking shelter from the Nazis, with a Danish family, in the 1970 war drama The Only Way.

From 1972 to 1973, she gained her first major TV role, as Emma Callon in the successful 1970s series The Onedin Line. During this time, she appeared as female lead Prima in the two-part TV mini-series Frankenstein: The True Story, and as Winston Churchill’s lover Pamela Plowden, in another of the films, produced by her father-in-law, Young Winston. She also drew her first major international attention, as Bond girl Solitaire in the 1973 James Bond film, Live and Let Die. IGN ranked her as 10th in a Top 10 Bond Babes list.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Jane Withers

October 25, 2019

Jane Withers is an American actress best known for being one of the most popular child film stars of the 1930s and early 1940s, as well as for her portrayal of “Josephine the Plumber” in a series of TV commercials for Comet cleanser in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Withers began her career as a child actress, first on local radio broadcasts in Atlanta, Georgia as “Dixie’s Dainty Dewdrop”. By the age of three, she was singing and imitating adult celebrities. In the early 1930s Withers and her family moved to Hollywood; she worked as an extra and a bit part player in several films in 1932 and 1933.

Withers’s big break came when she landed a supporting role in the 1934 Shirley Temple film Bright Eyes. Her character Joy Smythe was spoiled and obnoxious, a perfect foil to Temple’s sweet personality. In a 2006 interview on TCM’s with Robert Osborne, Withers recalled that she was hesitant to take this role because she had to be so “mean” to Shirley Temple and she thought the public would hate her for it. In a humorous scene of the two little girls playing with dolls, Withers tells Temple that she is going to the kitchen to get “the biggest knife I can find and operate on YOUR doll!” She also tells Temple: “There ain’t any Santa Claus, because my psychoanalyst told me!” Withers received positive notices for her work, and was awarded a long-term contract with Fox.

Through the remainder of the 1930s she starred in several movies every year, including Ginger, The Farmer Takes a Wife and Little Miss Nobody, usually cast as a wholesome, meddlesome young girl in films less sugary than Temple’s vehicles. Moviegoers flocked to see her films, and Withers became one of the top 10 box-office stars in 1937 and 1938. Her popularity was such that Fox gave her “name” co-stars: the Ritz Brothers and Gene Autry. Withers also took a flyer in screenwriting: she wrote the original story filmed as Small Town Deb, under the pseudonym “Jerrie Walters.”

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Jane Wyatt

October 25, 2019

Jane Waddington Wyatt was an American actress perhaps best known for her role as the housewife and mother on the television series Father Knows Best and as Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock on the science fiction television show, . Wyatt was a three-time Emmy-winner.

Jane Wyatt was born on August 12, 1910 in Campgaw, but was raised in New York City. Her father, Christopher Billopp Wyatt, Jr., was a Wall Street investment banker, and her mother, the former Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington, was a drama critic for the Catholic World. Both of her parents were Roman Catholic converts.

One of her ancestors, Rufus King, was a signer of the U.S. Constitution, a U.S. Senator and ambassador, and the Federalist candidate in the 1816 United States presidential election. She was also a descendant of British Royal Navy captain Christopher Billopp. She was a distant cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt and the poet Harry Crosby, through their shared descent from Philip Livingston, also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

While in New York City, Wyatt attended the Chapin School and later attended two years of Barnard College. After leaving Barnard, she joined the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where for six months she played a varied assortment of roles.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording, Television Permalink

Jane Wyman

October 25, 2019

Jane Wyman was an American singer, dancer, and character actress of film and television. She began her film career in the 1930s, and was a prolific performer for two decades. She received an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Johnny Belinda, and later achieved success during the 1980s for her leading role in the television series Falcon Crest.

Wyman was the first wife of Ronald Reagan, marrying him in 1940 and divorcing him in 1948, long before he ran for any public office. To date, she is the only woman to have been an ex-wife of a U.S. president, and Ronald Reagan is the only divorced person to hold the office of the President of the United States.

Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield in St. Joseph, Missouri. Although her birthdate has been widely reported for many years as January 4, 1914, research by biographers and genealogists indicates that she was born on January 5, 1917. The most likely reason for the 1914 date is that she added to her age when beginning her career as a minor, so that she could work. After Wyman’s death, a release posted on her official website confirmed these details.

Her parents were Manning Jefferies Mayfield, a meal-company laborer, and Hope Christian, a doctor’s stenographer and office assistant. In October 1921, her mother filed for divorce, and her father died unexpectedly the following year at age 27. After her father’s death, her mother moved to Cleveland, Ohio, leaving her to be reared by foster parents, Emma and Richard D. Fulks, the chief of detectives in Saint Joseph. She took their surname unofficially, including in her school records and, apparently, her first marriage certificate.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Jan Clayton

October 25, 2019

Jan Clayton was a film, musical theatre, and television actress.

None of her film roles were notable, except for an unbilled role as a singing inmate in The Snake Pit, but in 1945, she was selected to play Julie Jordan in the original Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic, Carousel. She left the show to star in the 1946 Broadway revival of Show Boat, as Magnolia, while Carousel was still continuing its Broadway run.

The 1946 production of Show Boat was the longest-running revival of a stage musical up to that time – 416 performances. Ms. Clayton can be heard on the original cast recordings of both Carousel and Show Boat. The Show Boat album was the first American production of the show to be recorded with its original cast.

Clayton later played Jeff Miller’s ‘s mother on Lassie on television. She played herself in an appearance on Peter Lawford’s short-lived NBC sitcom, Dear Phoebe.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Jan Murray

October 25, 2019

Jan Murray was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and game show host who made his name on the Borscht Belt.

Murray was born Murray Janofsky in The Bronx, New York City. His interest in comedy began during his childhood, when he would often act out comedy routines he’d seen at the local theatre for his bedridden mother.

Murray began performing on the vaudeville stage at the age of 18, then later at the Catskills resorts popular with Jewish vacationers. In the early 50’s he became a Las Vegas marquee performer. He then segued into TV, going on to host a number of game shows such as Blind Date, Dollar a Second, his creation Treasure Hunt, Charge Account, and Chain Letter. He was later a frequent panelist on The Hollywood Squares and co-hosted the annual West Coast Chabad Lubavitch telethon for many years.

Murray’s film appearances included A Man Called Dagger, Thunder Alley, Tarzan and the Great River, Which Way to the Front?, and History of the World, Part I. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career and was a guest host of The Tonight Show on many occasions.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Jan Peerce

October 25, 2019

Jan Peerce was an American operatic tenor. He is the father of film director Larry Peerce.

Jan Peerce’s parents, Louis and Henya Perelmuth, came from the Russian village of Horodetz. Their first child, a daughter, died in an epidemic. In 1903 they emigrated to America along with second child, a boy named Mottel. A year later, on June 3, 1904, their third child, a boy named Jacob Pincus was born, in a cold water flat in the Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York. He was nicknamed “Pinky” by his neighborhood friends. When he was three years old, his older brother Mottel was killed in an accident as he hitched a ride on an ice wagon. Jan remained on the Lower East Side until his 1930 marriage to Alice Kalmanovitz, a childhood friend. He attended De Witt Clinton High School and Columbia University. At his mother’s urging he took violin lessons, and gave public performances, including dance band work as Jack “Pinky” Pearl. Sometimes he also sang and it was soon discovered he was an exceptional lyric tenor.

In 1932 he was hired as a tenor soloist with the Radio City Music Hall company by the impresario Roxy, who renamed him John Pierce. They soon compromised on the spelling Jan Peerce, which the singer felt better reflected his ethnicity. Thanks to radio broadcasts and stage programs, Peerce soon had a nationwide following. The legendary maestro Arturo Toscanini heard him singing Wagner on the radio and was able to contact Peerce through a mutual friend to see if he would like to audition for him. Toscanini found him to be the tenor he had sought to sing operatic and choral works with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The recordings made during, or following, the NBC broadcasts are among the outstanding musical legacies of the mid-20th century. Toscanini was reportedly pleased with Peerce’s professionalism, as well as his extraordinary musical talents; many have said that Peerce may have been Toscanini’s “favorite tenor” during the Maestro’s 17 years at NBC. Peerce recalled that Toscanini never lost his temper the way he famously did with other musicians even though Peerce believed he had the right to, on a few occasions. Peerce first sang with Toscanini on February 6, 1938, in Carnegie Hall in a broadcast performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; the soloists also included soprano Vina Bovy, mezzo soprano Kerstin Thorborg, and bass Ezio Pinza.

Peerce joined the roster of principal tenors at the Philadelphia La Scala Opera Company in 1938. He made his professional opera debut with the company on December 10 of that year as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto with Robert Weede in the title role and Fritz Mahler conducting. He also sang Alfredo in La traviata with Annunciata Garrotto as Violetta and Weede as Germont during the company’s 1938-1939 season. Peerce sang in several more performance with the PLSOC through 1941, singing Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Elda Ercole as Cio-cio-san, and reprising the roles of the Duke and Alfredo a number of times.