25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Imogene Coca

October 25, 2019

Imogene Fernandez de Coca was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows. Starting out in vaudeville as a child acrobat, she studied ballet and wished to have a serious career in music and dance, graduating to decades of stage musical revues, cabaret and summer stock. Finally in her 40s she began a celebrated career as a comedienne in television, starring in six series and guesting on successful television programs from the 1940s to the 1990s.

She was nominated for five Emmy awards for Your Show of Shows, winning Best Actress in 1951 and singled out for a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting in 1953. Coca was also nominated for a Tony Award in 1978 for On the Twentieth Century and received a sixth Emmy nomination at the age of 80 for an episode of Moonlighting.

Though possessing a rubbery face capable of the broadest expressions?Life magazine compared her to Beatrice Lillie and Charlie Chaplin, and described her characterizations as taking “people or situations suspended in their own precarious balance between dignity and absurdity, and push them over the cliff with one single, pointed gesture”?the magazine noted a “particularly high-brow critic” as observing, “The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly. Miss Coca, on the other hand, is the timid woman who, when aroused, can beat a tiger to death with a feather.”

In addition to vaudeville, cabaret, theater and television, she appeared in film, voiced children’s cartoons and was even featured in an MTV video by a New Wave band. Though her fame began late, she worked well into her 80s. Twice a widow, Coca died in 2001.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Ina Claire

October 25, 2019

Ina Claire was an American stage and film actress.

Born Ina Fagan in Washington, D.C., Claire began her career appearing in vaudeville. She performed on Broadway in the musicals Jumping Jupiter and The Quaker Girl and Lady Luxury, and starred on Broadway in plays by some of the leading comic dramatists of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, including the roles of Jerry Lamarr in Avery Hopwood’s The Gold Diggers, Mrs. Cheyney in Frederick Lonsdale’s The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, Lady George Grayston in W. Somerset Maugham’s Our Betters, and Enid Fuller in George Kelly’s The Fatal Weakness.

Her last stage appearance was as Lady Elizabeth Mulhammer in T. S. Eliot’s The Confidential Clerk. She was particularly identified with the high comedies of S. N. Behrman, and created the female leads in three of his plays: Biography, End of Summer, and The Talley Method. of her, Behrman wrote, “Her readings were translucent, her stage presence encompassing. The flick of an intonation deflated pomposity. She never missed a nuance.” Critic J. Brooks Atkinson praised Claire for her “refulgent comic intelligence.”

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Ingrid Bergman

October 25, 2019

Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress noted for her starring roles in American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute. She is best remembered for her role as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca, a World War II drama co-starring Humphrey Bogart.

Before becoming a star in American films, she had already been a leading actress in Swedish, French, German, Italian, and British films. Her first introduction to American audiences came with her starring role in the English remake of Intermezzo in 1939. In America, she brought to the screen a “Nordic freshness and vitality”, along with extreme beauty and intelligence, and according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, she quickly became “the ideal of American womanhood” and one of Hollywood’s greatest leading actresses.

Her producer David O. Selznick, who called her “the most completely conscientious actress” he had ever worked with, gave her a seven-year acting contract, thereby assuring her continual stardom. A few of her other starring roles, besides Casablanca, included For Whom the Bell Tolls, Gaslight, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Notorious, and Under Capricorn, and the independent production, Joan of Arc. In 1950, after a decade of stardom in American films, she starred in the Italian film Stromboli, which led to a love affair with director Roberto Rossellini while they were both already married. The affair created a scandal that forced her to return to Europe until 1956, when she made a successful Hollywood comeback in Anastasia, for which she won her second Academy Award, as well as the forgiveness of her fans. Many of her personal and film documents can be seen in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Irene Dunne

October 25, 2019

Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s and 1940s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron, Theodora Goes Wild, The Awful Truth, Love Affair and I Remember Mama. Born Irene Marie Dunn in Louisville, Kentucky to Joseph Dunn, a steamboat inspector for the United States government, and Adelaide Henry, a concert pianist/music teacher from Newport, Kentucky, Irene Dunn would later write "No triumph of either my stage or screen career has ever rivalled the excitement of trips down the Mississippi on the river boats with my father." She was only eleven when her father died in 1909. She saved all of his letters and often remembered and lived by what he told her the night before he died: "Happiness is never an accident. It is the prize we get when we choose wisely from life's great stores."

After her father's death, she, her mother and younger brother Charles moved to her mother's hometown of Madison, Indiana. Dunn's mother taught her to play the piano as a very small girl. According to Dunn, "Music was as natural as breathing in our house." Dunne was raised as a devout Roman Catholic. Nicknamed "Dunnie," she took piano and voice lessons, sang in local churches and high school plays before her graduation in 1916.

She earned a diploma to teach art, but took a chance on a contest and won a prestigious scholarship to the Chicago Musical College. She had hopes of becoming an opera singer, but did not pass an audition with the Metropolitan Opera Company.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Irene Hervey

October 25, 2019

Irene Hervey was an American television and film actress.

Born Beulah Irene Herwick in Venice, California, she began her acting career after being introduced to a casting agent from MGM. After a successful screen test, she was signed by the studio and made her screen debut in the 1933 film The Stranger’s Return, opposite Lionel Barrymore. Though signed by MGM, Hervey was loaned out by the studio and appeared in several films including United Artists’ The Count of Monte Cristo and With Words and Music, released by Grand National Films Inc.

In 1936, Hervey left MGM and signed with Universal Pictures. While at Universal, Hervey appeared in The League of Frightened Men and Destry Rides Again with Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart.

In 1943, Hervey was seriously injured in a car accident and was forced to retire from acting for five years.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Television Permalink

Irene Rich

October 25, 2019

Irene Rich was an American actress who worked in both silent pictures and talkies.

Born Irene Luther in Buffalo, New York, Rich worked for Will Rogers, who used her in eight pictures including Water Water Everywhere, The Strange Boarder, Jes’ Call Me Jim, Boys Will Be Boys, and The Ropin’ Fool. She commonly played experienced society women. She played this role in the 1925 adaptation of Lady Windermere’s Fan and also in Queen of the Yukon. In two of her last films she played a frontier wife and mother. She was the mother of Gail Russell’s character ‘Penelope Worth’, in John Wayne’s Angel and the Badman as well as in John Ford’s cavalry story Fort Apache in which she portrayed Mrs. O’Rourke, the wife of Sergeant O’Rourke. In the 1930s, Rich did much work in radio. From 1933 to 1944, she hosted a nationwide anthology program of serialized mini-dramas entitled Dear John. Her leading man was actor Gale Gordon, who later played Lucille Ball’s apoplectic boss “Mr. Mooney” on TV. Rich also dabbled in stage in such productions as Seven Keys to Baldpate which starred George M. Cohan and As the Girls Go in 1948.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Hugh Hefner

October 25, 2019

In memory of Walk of Famer Hugh Hefner, flowers were placed on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday, September 28, 2017, 11:00 a.m. PDT The star in category of Television is located at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard. “Rest in peace Mr. Hefner.” Ana Martinez, Producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame signed the card on behalf of the Hollywood Historic Trust and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Hugh Marston Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises. In 2003, Arena magazine listed him second on the "50 Most Powerful People in Porn" list.

Hefner was born in Chicago, Illinois, the elder of two sons born to Grace Caroline and Glenn Lucius Hefner, both teachers. Hefner's mother was of Swedish descent and his father had German and English ancestry; on his father's side, Hefner is a direct descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. He has described his family as "conservative, Midwest, Methodist". He went to Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served as a writer for a military newspaper in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946. He later graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.A. in psychology with a double minor in creative writing and art in 1949, earning his degree in two and a half years. After graduation, he took a semester of graduate courses in sociology and women and gender studies at Northwestern University but dropped out soon after.

Working as a copywriter for Esquire, he left in January 1952 after being denied a $5 raise. In 1953, he mortgaged his furniture, generating a bank loan of $600 and raised $8,000 from 45 investors – including $1,000 from his mother – to launch Playboy, which was initially going to be called Stag Party. The undated first issue, published in December 1953, featured Marilyn Monroe from her 1949 nude calendar shoot. Hefner, who never met Monroe, bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Hefner married Northwestern University student Mildred Williams in 1949. They had two children, Christie and David. Before the wedding, Mildred confessed that she had had an affair while he was away in the Army; he called the admission "the most devastating moment of my life." A 2006 E! True Hollywood Story profile of Hefner revealed that Mildred allowed him to sleep with other women, out of guilt for her infidelity and in the hopes that it would preserve their marriage. They divorced in 1959.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Hugh Herbert

October 25, 2019

Hugh Herbert was a motion picture comedian. He began his career in vaudeville, and wrote more than 150 plays and sketches.

The advent of talking pictures brought stage-trained actors to Hollywood, and Hugh Herbert soon became a popular movie comedian. His screen character was usually absent-minded and flustered. He would flutter his fingers together and talk to himself, repeating the same phrases: “hoo-hoo-hoo, wonderful, wonderful, hoo hoo hoo!” This catchphrase inspired Daffy Duck’s “hoo hoo, hoo hoo” phrase during the early years of the character. So many imitators copied the catchphrase as “woo woo” that Herbert actually adopted “woo woo” himself in the 1940s.

Herbert’s earliest movies, like Wheeler & Woolsey’s 1930 feature Hook, Line and Sinker, cast him in generic comedy roles that could have been taken by any comedian. Herbert soon developed his own unique screen personality, complete with a silly giggle, and this new character caught on quickly. He was frequently featured in Warner Brothers films of the 1930s, including Footlight Parade, Dames, Bureau of Missing Persons, Fog Over Frisco, Fashions of 1934, Gold Diggers of 1935, as well the 1935 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He also played leads in B comedies, notably Sh! The Octopus, a 1937 comedy-mystery featuring an exceptional unmasking of the culprit. Herbert was often caricatured in Warners’ Looney Tunes shorts of the ’30s and ’40s, such as The Hardship of Miles Standish and Speaking of the Weather.

In 1939 Herbert signed with Universal Pictures, where, as at Warners, he played supporting roles in major films, and leading roles in minor ones. One of his best-received performances from this period is in the Olsen and Johnson comedy Hellzapoppin‘, in which Hugh plays a nutty detective.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Hugh O’Brian

October 25, 2019

Hugh O'Brian is an American actor, known for his starring role in the ABC television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. O'Brian was born Hugh Charles Krampe in Rochester, New York, the son of Hugh John Krampe, a career United States Marine Corps officer, and his wife Edith Krampe. He attended New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois and later Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri. He lettered in football, basketball, wrestling, and track. O'Brian dropped out of the University of Cincinnati after one semester to enlist in the Marine Corps during World War II. Only 17, he became the youngest Marine drill instructor.

After World War II, O'Brian moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA. He was discovered on the stage by Ida Lupino who signed him to a film she was directing Never Fear that led to a contract with Universal Pictures.

He was chosen to portray legendary lawman Wyatt Earp on ABC, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp which debuted in 1955. Alongside Gunsmoke, which debuted the same year, these shows spearheaded the "adult western" TV genre, where the emphasis is on character development as opposed to mere moral sermonizing. It soon became one of the top-rated shows on television. During its seven-year run, Wyatt Earp consistently placed in the top 10 in the United States. He also appeared regularly on other programs in the 1960s, including Jack Palance's ABC circus drama, The Greatest Show on Earth, and as a 'guest attorney' in an episode of Perry Mason when its star Raymond Burr was sidelined for a spell after minor emergency surgery. He was a guest celebrity panelist on the popular CBS prime-time programs Password and What's My Line? and even served as a mystery guest on three occasions.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Hugo Winterhalter

October 25, 2019

Hugo Winterhalter was an American musician. An easy listening arranger and composer, Winterhalter was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Mount St. Mary’s near Emmitsburg, Maryland in 1931, where he played saxophone for the orchestra and sang in two of the choirs. He later studied violin and reed instruments at the New England Conservatory of Music. After graduating, he taught school for several years before turning professional during the mid 1930s, serving as a sideman and arranger for Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Raymond Scott, Claude Thornhill and others.

Winterhalter also arranged and conducted sessions for singers including Dinah Shore and Billy Eckstine, and in 1948 he was named musical director at MGM Records. After a two-year stint with the record label, he moved to Columbia Records, where he scored a hit with his orchestral reading of “Blue Christmas.”

In 1950, Winterhalter signed on with RCA Victor, where he arranged sessions for artists including Perry Como, Eddie Fisher and the Ames Brothers; he also recorded several instrumental albums, among them 1952’s Great Music Themes of Television, one of the first collections of TV theme songs ever recorded. Winterhalter also notched a series of chart hits, including “Blue Tango,” “Vanessa,” “The Little Shoemaker” and “Song of The Barefoot Contessa”; with pianist Eddie Heywood, he reached the number two spot with 1956’s “Canadian Sunset.”

He remained with RCA until 1963, at which time he moved to Kapp; that same year, he also penned the main title theme for the film, Diamond Head. At Kapp he recorded a handful of albums including The Best of ’64 and its follow-up, The Big Hits of 1965, before leaving the label to work on Broadway. He later worked in television as well, and continued recording the occasional LP for various budget labels.