25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

Glen Gray

October 25, 2019

Glen Gray Knoblauch, better known as Glen Gray, was a jazz saxophonist and leader of the Casa Loma Orchestra.

Gray was born to Lurdie P. and Agnes Knoblauch in Metamora, Illinois. His father was a lifelong railroad worker who died when Glen was two years of age. His widowed mother married George H. DeWilde, who was a few years younger than she was.

Gray graduated from Roanoke High School. He is said to have joined the army at seventeen and two years later he was living at home with his family. He was employed as a bill clerk for the railroad. He attended Illinois Wesleyan University but left to work for the Santa Fe Railroad.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

George Sidney

October 25, 2019

George Sidney was an American film director and film producer who worked primarily at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Born in Long Island City, New York, Sidney began his career as an assistant at MGM until being assigned to direct the Our Gang comedies, which MGM had just acquired from Hal Roach, in 1938. Sidney, then age 21, was the youngest Our Gang senior director ever, and was only nine years older than the eldest Our Gang kid, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer’s brother Harold.

After a year of working on Our Gang shorts, Sidney moved on to the Crime Does Not Pay series and popular Pete Smith specialties. He soon graduated to features, including The Harvey Girls, The Three Musketeers, Annie Get Your Gun, The Red Danube, Kiss Me, Kate, Jupiter’s Darling, The Eddy Duchin Story, Pal Joey, Jeanne Eagels, Bye Bye Birdie, and Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas. His last film was Half a Sixpence. Sidney became good friends with MGM animation directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Hanna and Barbera’s Jerry Mouse appeared alongside Gene Kelly in Sidney’s film Anchors Aweigh. After MGM closed its animation studio in 1957, Sidney helped Hanna and Barbera form a deal with Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures, to form the successful television animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions, for which Sidney served as a boardmember for ten years. Sidney later featured Hanna-Barbera’s Fred Flintstone, Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear in Bye Bye Birdie.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

George Stevens

October 25, 2019

George Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.

Among his most notable films were Diary of Anne Frank, nominated for Best Director, Giant, winner of Oscar for Best Director, Shane, Oscar nominated, and A Place in the Sun, winner of Oscar for Best Director.

Born in Oakland, California, Stevens broke into the movie business as a cameraman, working on many Laurel and Hardy shorts. His first feature film was The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble in 1933.

In 1934 he got his first directing job, the slapstick Kentucky Kernels. His big break came when he directed Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams in 1935. He went on in the late 1930s to direct several Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies, not only with the two actors together, but on their own. In 1940, he directed Carole Lombard in Vigil in the Night, and the film has an alternate ending for European audiences in recognition of World War II, which the US had not yet entered.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

George Takei

October 25, 2019

George Hosato Takei Altman is an American actor, best known for his role in the television series ‘, in which he played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the. He is an outspoken proponent of gay rights and active in state and local politics as well as continuing his acting career. He has won several awards and accolades in his work on human rights and Japanese-American relations, including his work with the Japanese American National Museum.

In 1942, the Takei family was originally housed in the horse stables of Santa Anita Park before being sent to the Rohwer War Relocation Center for internment in Arkansas. The family was later transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California. Despite this experience, the family developed a renewed dedication and remained involved in the American democratic process. He and his family returned to Los Angeles at the end of World War II. He attended Mount Vernon Junior High School, where he served as student body president, and Los Angeles High School. He enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley where he studied architecture. Later he attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor of arts in theater in 1960 and a master of arts in theater in 1964. He attended the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-Upon-Avon in England, and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. In Hollywood, he studied acting at the Desilu Workshop. Takei is fluent in English and Japanese.

Takei began his career in Hollywood in the late 1950s, at a time when Asian faces were rarely seen on television and movie screens. His first role was providing voiceover for several characters in the English dub of Japanese monster films such as Godzilla Raids Again and Rodan, followed by an appearance in the Emmy award winning television series Playhouse 90. Takei subsequently appeared alongside such actors as Richard Burton in Ice Palace, Jeffrey Hunter in Hell to Eternity, Alec Guinness in A Majority of One, James Caan in Red Line 7000 and Cary Grant in Walk Don’t Run. He played Captain Nim, an ARVN LLDB officer alongside John Wayne’s character in the 1968 Vietnam War era film, The Green Berets. He starred in The Encounter, a controversial episode of the Emmy Award winning television show The Twilight Zone.

He had an uncredited role in the 1963 film PT-109 as the helmsman who steers the Japanese destroyer over John F. Kennedy’s PT-109. He appeared in Walk Don’t Run with Cary Grant and Samantha Eggar and he starred in an episode of ‘ during that show’s first season in 1966. He also appeared in two Jerry Lewis comedies, The Big Mouth and Which Way to the Front?

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Geraldine Farrar

October 25, 2019

Geraldine Farrar was an American soprano opera singer and film actress. She had a large following among young women, who were nicknamed “Gerry-flappers”.

Farrar was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, the daughter of Sidney Farrar and his wife Henrietta Barnes. She studied voice in Boston, New York, Paris, and finally in Berlin, with famed soprano Lilli Lehmann. Farrar created a sensation in the German capital with her debut as Marguerite in Charles Gounod’s Faust in 1901. She appeared subsequently in the title rôles of Ambroise Thomas’ Mignon and Jules Massenet’s Manon, as well as Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Her admirers in Berlin included Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, with whom she is believed to have had a relationship beginning in 1903.

After appearing at Monte Carlo, she made her debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera in Romeo et Juliette in 1906. She appeared in the first Met performance of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in 1907 and remained a member of the company until her retirement in 1922, singing 29 roles there in nearly 500 performances. She developed a great popular following, especially among New York’s young female opera-goers, who were known as “Gerry-flappers”. Farrar created the title roles in Pietro Mascagni’s Amica, Puccini’s Suor Angelica, and Umberto Giordano’s Madame Sans-Gêne as well as the Goosegirl in Engelbert Humperdinck’s Die Königskinder

She recorded extensively for the Victor Talking Machine Company and was often featured prominently in that firm’s advertisements. She also appeared in silent movies, which were filmed between opera seasons. Farrar starred in more than a dozen films from 1915 to 1920, including Cecil B. De Mille’s 1915 adaptation of Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen. One of her most notable screen roles was as Joan of Arc in the 1917 film Joan the Woman.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Geraldine Fitzgerald

October 25, 2019

Geraldine Fitzgerald was an Irish-American actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Fitzgerald was born in Greystones, County Wicklow, south of Dublin, the daughter of Edith and Edward Fitzgerald, who was an attorney. Her father was Catholic and her mother a Protestant who converted to Catholicism. She was a great-aunt of the actress Tara Fitzgerald, and a cousin of the British novelist Nevil Shute.

Inspired by her aunt, the actress/director Shelah Richards, Geraldine Fitzgerald began her acting career in 1932 in theatre in her native Dublin before moving to London in 1934 to appear in British films. She quickly came to be regarded as one of the British film industry’s most promising young performers and her most successful film of this period was The Mill on the Floss. Her success led her to America and Broadway in 1938, and while appearing opposite Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House, she was seen by the film producer Hal B. Wallis who signed her to a seven-year film contract. She achieved two significant successes in 1939; she received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Isabella Linton in Wuthering Heights and had an important role in Dark Victory, with both films achieving great box office success.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Gig Young

October 25, 2019

Gig Young was an American film, stage, and television actor.

Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota, his parents John and Emma Barr raised him and his older siblings in Washington D.C. He developed a passion for the theatre while appearing in high school plays, and after some amateur experience he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in Pancho, a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he and the leading actor in the play, George Reeves, were spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout. Both actors were signed to supporting player contracts with the studio. His early work was uncredited or as Byron Barr, but after appearing in the 1942 film The Gay Sisters as a character named “Gig Young”, the studio decided he should adopt this name professionally.

Young appeared in supporting roles in numerous films during the 1940s, and came to be regarded as a popular and likable second lead, playing the brothers or friends of the principal characters. Young took a hiatus from his movie career and enlisted in the United States Coast Guard in 1941 where he served as a pharmacist’s mate until the end of World War II. After Young’s return from the war, Warner Bros. dropped his option. He then began freelancing at various studios, eventually obtaining a contract with Columbia Pictures before returning to freelancing. During those years, Young began to play the type of role that he would become best known for, a sardonic but engaging and affable drunk. His dramatic work as an alcoholic in the 1951 film Come Fill the Cup and his comedic role as a tipsy but ultimately charming intellectual in Teacher’s Pet earned him nominations for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1955, Young became the host of Warner Bros. Presents, an umbrella title for three television series that aired during the 1955-56 season on ABC Television. Later, he starred on the 1964-65 NBC series The Rogues, sharing appearances on a rotating basis with David Niven and Charles Boyer in the Four Star Television production.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Gigi Perreau

October 25, 2019

Gigi Perreau, is an American actress. She achieved success as a child actress in a number of films. She played the daughter of Claude Rains and Bette Davis’s characters in the 1944 film Mr. Skeffington. In Shadow on the Wall, she starred as the sole witness to a murder. As the “top child movie actress for 1951”, the then ten-year-old was given the keys to the city of Pittsburgh by its mayor, David L. Lawrence, the youngest to be so honored. However, her career lost momentum as she grew up. She played supporting roles in the 1959 sitcom The Betty Hutton Show on CBS, and in the Follow the Sun television series on ABC from 1961-1962, in which she played secretary Katherine Ann “Kathy” Richards. She retired from acting in 1967. However, in the new millennium, she provided a voice in the animated film Fly Me to the Moon, and is credited by the Internet Movie Database with two other movies in post-production.

Perreau is an alumna of Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles and has taught drama classes there. As of 2010, she is a member of the Board of Directors of both the Donna Reed Foundation for the Performing Arts and the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, and the Vice-President of the Drama Teachers Association of Southern California.

Gerald and, to a lesser extent, her younger sisters Janine and Lauren, also had a measure of success in film and on television.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Gil Cates

October 25, 2019

 

In Remembrance of Gil Cates
Flowers were placed on his Hollywood Walk of Fame Star

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA November 1, 2011- Flowers were placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame star of Gil Cates on November 1, 2011 at 3 p.m.  The star is located at 7065 Hollywood Boulevard. The flowers are placed on the stars on behalf of the Hollywood community by the Hollywood Historic Trust.

Gilbert Gil Cates is an American film director and television producer. He is probably best known for producing the annual Academy Award shows. In September 2007, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that he would be producing the 80th Academy Awards, his 14th time. The awards took place on Sunday February 24, 2008. Cates directed a number of feature films including I Never Sang for My Father and Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, Oh, God! Book II and The Last Married Couple in America. Cates was born Gilbert Katz in New York City, the son of Nina and Nathan Katz, who was a dress manufacturer. There he attended DeWitt Clinton High School.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Gilbert Roland

October 25, 2019

Gilbert Roland was a Mexican-born American film actor.

He was born Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and originally intended to become a bullfighter like his father. When the family moved to the United States, however, he became interested in acting when he was picked at random for a role as an extra. He chose his screen name by combining the names of his favorite actors, John Gilbert and Ruth Roland. He was often cast in the typical “Latin Lover” role.

Roland’s first major role was as one of Clara Bow’s love interests in the collegiate comedy The Plastic Age. In 1927, he played Armand in Camille opposite Norma Talmadge, with whom he was romantically linked. He starred opposite Talmadge in several films, until sound ended her career. Roland’s strong masculine voice assured that his own career continued. He starred in several Spanish language adaptations of American films and continued as a romantic lead.

Beginning in the 1940s, critics began to take notice of his acting and he was praised for his supporting roles in John Huston’s We Were Strangers, The Bad and the Beautiful, Thunder Bay, and Cheyenne Autumn. He also appeared in a series of films in the mid 1940s as the popular character “The Cisco Kid“. He played Hugo, the agnostic friend of the three shepherd children in The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, based on the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. In 1953 he starred in the epic Beneath the 12-Mile Reef as Greek-American sponge diver Mike Petrakis. His last film appearance was in the 1982 Western Barbarosa.