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.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Humberto Luna

October 25, 2019

Humberto Luna is a Spanish language radio personality, TV host, and movie actor. He currently has a Spanish language radio show broadcast throughout the United States called El Show de Humberto Luna on Clear Channel.

Previously, Humberto Luna hosted the morning show at Viva 107.1 a Los Angeles radio station. He is a veteran of the Los Angeles radio market with over 25 years of experience. He was the lead morning show disc jockey at KLAX-FM in Los Angeles, Spanish Broadcasting Systems' flagship property. From 1991 to 1995 he hosted the Television show Hora lunática, La.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Hoagy Carmichael

October 25, 2019

Hoagland Howard “Hoagy” Carmichael was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing “Stardust”, “Georgia On My Mind”, “The Nearness of You”, and “Heart and Soul”, four of the most-recorded American songs of all time.

Alec Wilder, in his study of the American popular song, concluded that Hoagy Carmichael was the “most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented” of the hundreds of writers composing pop songs in the first half of the 20th century.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Carmichael was the only son of Howard Clyde Carmichael and Lida Robison. He was named Hoagland after a circus troupe “The Hoaglands” who stayed at the Carmichael house during his mother’s pregnancy. Howard was a horse-drawn taxi driver and electrician, and Lida a versatile pianist who played accompaniment at silent movies and for parties. The family moved frequently, as Howard sought better employment for his growing family. At six, Carmichael started to sing and play the piano, absorbing easily his mother’s keyboard skills. By high school, the piano was the focus of his after-school life, and for inspiration he would listen to ragtime pianists Hank Wells and Hube Hanna. At eighteen, the small, wiry, pale Carmichael was living in Indianapolis, trying to help his family?s income working in manual jobs in construction, a bicycle chain factory, and a slaughterhouse. The bleak time was partly spelled by four-handed piano duets with his mother and by his strong friendship with Reg DuValle, black bandleader and pianist known as “the elder statesman of Indiana jazz” and “the Rhythm King”, who taught him piano jazz improvization.

The death of his three-year-old sister in 1918 affected him deeply, and he wrote “My sister Joanne?the victim of poverty. We couldn?t afford a good doctor or good attention, and that?s when I vowed I would never be broke again in my lifetime.” She may have died from influenza, which had swept the world that year. Carmichael earned his first money as a musician playing at a fraternity dance that year and began his musical career.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Hobart Bosworth

October 25, 2019

Hobart Bosworth was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer.

Born Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth, he was a direct descendant of Miles Standish and John and Priscilla Alden on his father's side and of New York's Van Zandt family, the first Dutch settlers to land in the New World, on his mother's side. Bosworth was always proud of his lineage.

After his mother died, his father remarried and young Hobart took a dislike to his stepmother. Convinced he was "ill used and cruelly treated", in 1914, he told an interviewer he ran away to New York City. There he signed on as a cabin boy for Sovereign of the Seas, a clipper ship, and was soon out to sea.

After his first voyage, a five-month trip that took him from New York to San Francisco, Hobart spent his wages on candy. He continued as a sailor as the sea was in his family's blood, eventually spending three years at sea.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Holly Hunter

October 25, 2019

Holly Paige Hunter is an American actress. Her films include Raising Arizona, Broadcast News, Always, and The Piano for which she won several acting awards, including an Academy Award for Best Actress. She also starred in the cable television series Saving Grace.

Holly Hunter was born in Conyers, Georgia, the daughter of Opal Marguerite, a housewife, and Charles Edwin Hunter, a farmer and sporting-goods manufacturer's representative. Hunter earned a degree in drama from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, after which she moved to New York City and roomed with fellow actress Frances McDormand. Hunter in 2008 described living in The Bronx "at the end of the D train, just off 205th Street, on Bainbridge Avenue and Hull Avenue. It was very Irish, and then you could go just a few blocks away and hit major Italian". A chance encounter with playwright Beth Henley, when the two were trapped alone in an elevator, led to Hunter's being cast in Henley's plays Crimes of the Heart, and Off-Broadway's The Miss Firecracker Contest. "It was like the beginning of 1982. It was on 49th Street between Broadway and Eighth on the south side of the street", Hunter recalled in an interview. " 10 minutes; not long. We actually had a nice conversation. It was just the two of us".

When she moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1982, Hunter shared a house with a group of people that included McDormand and director Sam Raimi, as well as future collaborators Joel and Ethan Coen.

Hunter made her screen debut in the 1981 horror movie The Burning. After moving to Los Angeles, California in 1982, Hunter appeared in TV movies before being cast in a supporting role in 1984's Swing Shift. That year, she had her first collaboration with the writing-directing-producing team of brothers Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, in Blood Simple, making an uncredited appearance as a voice on an answering-machine recording. More film and television work followed until 1987, when thanks to a starring role in the Coens' Raising Arizona and her Academy Award-nominated turn in Broadcast News, Hunter became a critically acclaimed star. She went on to the screen adaptation of Henley's Miss Firecracker; Steven Spielberg's Always, a romantic drama with Richard Dreyfuss; and the made-for-TV 1989 docudrama about the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording 7 Comments Permalink

Hoot Gibson

October 25, 2019 7 Comments

Hoot Gibson was an American rodeo champion and a pioneer cowboy film actor, director and producer.

Born Edmund Richard Gibson in Tekamah, Nebraska, he learned to ride a horse while still a very young boy. His family moved to California when he was seven years old. As a teenager he worked with horses on a ranch, which led to competition on bucking broncos at area rodeos. Given the nickname “Hoot Owl” by co-workers, the name evolved to just “Hoot”.

In 1910, film director Francis Boggs was looking for experienced cowboys to appear in his silent film short, Pride of the Range. Gibson and another future star of Western films, Tom Mix, were hired. Gibson made a second film for Boggs in 1911. After the director was killed by a deranged employee, Gibson was hired by director Jack Conway to appear in his 1912 Western, His Only Son.

Acting for Gibson was then a minor sideline and he continued competing in rodeos to make a living. In 1912 he won the all-around championship at the famous Pendleton Round-Up in Pendleton, Oregon and the steer roping World Championship at the Calgary Stampede.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television 1 Comment Permalink

Horace Heidt

October 25, 2019 1 Comment

Horace Heidt was an American pianist, big band leader, and radio and television personality.

Born in Alameda, California, Heidt attended Culver Academies. His band, Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights, toured vaudeville and performed on radio and television through the 1930s and 1940s.

With fame, Heidt moved into the then-new Brentwood neighborhood of West Los Angeles at 1525 San Vicente Boulevard. He bought the mansion from the widow of a retired dentist, which offered stunning views of Santa Monica Canyon, overlooking the Riviera Country Club and Catalina Island on a clear day. The expansive chateau-style residence, featured in 1927 on the cover of the rotogravure magazine Pictorial California, has long since been razed and the property subdivided.

From 1932 to 1953, Heidt was one of the more popular radio bandleaders, heard on both NBC and CBS in a variety of different formats over the years. He began on the NBC Blue Network in 1932 with Shell Oil's Ship of Joy and Answers by the Dancers. During the late 1930s on CBS he did Captain Dobbsie's Ship of Joy and Horace Heidt's Alemite Brigadeers before returning to NBC for 1937-39 broadcasts.