25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Frank Fay

October 25, 2019

Frank Fay was an American film and stage actor, emcee, comedian, best-known as an actor for having played “Elwood P. Dowd” in the play Harvey by the American playwright Mary Coyle Chase on Broadway. James Stewart played the role in the film version.

Born as Francis Anthony Donner in San Francisco, California to Irish Catholic parents. He took the professional name of Frank Fay after concluding that his birth name was not suitable for the stage. He enjoyed considerable success as a variety artist starting around 1918, telling jokes and stories in a carefully planned “off the cuff” manner that was very original for the time. Jack Benny stated that he modeled his early stage character on Fay. During the 1920s Fay was vaudeville’s highest-paid headliner, earning $17,500 a week.

When talkies arrived, the Warner Bros. were eager to put him under contract along with a host of other famous stage personalities. Frank Fay was cast as master of ceremonies in Warner’s Brothers most expensive production of 1929, the all-star color all-talking revue The Show of Shows. Based on the success of that film, Fay was quickly signed up for an all-Technicolor musical comedy entitled Under A Texas Moon in which he also displayed his singing abilities. The movie was a box office success and produced a song hit of the theme song which was also titled “Under A Texas Moon”.

Fay sang the theme song several times throughout the picture. Another expensive picture, Bright Lights, an extravagant all-Technicolor musical, quickly followed. Frank Fay also starred in The Matrimonial Bed, a Pre-Code comedy in which he sang the theme song twice. Frank Fay quickly found himself associated with musical films and this led to a decline in his popularity when the public became sick of musicals late in 1930.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Frank Faylen

October 25, 2019

Frank Faylen was an American movie and television actor.

Born Frank Ruf in St. Louis, Missouri, he began his acting career as an infant appearing with his vaudeville performing parents on stage. After traveling with his showbiz parents through his childhood, Faylen became a stage actor at 18, and eventually began working in movies in the 1930s. He began playing a number of unmemorable bit parts for Warner Brothers, then freelanced for other studios in gradually larger character roles. He appears as Walt Disney’s musical conductor in The Reluctant Dragon, and as a stern railroad official in the Laurel and Hardy comedy A-Haunting We Will Go. Faylen and L & H supporting player Charlie Hall were teamed briefly by Monogram Pictures.

Faylen’s breakthrough came in 1945, where he was cast as Bim, the cynical male nurse at Bellevue’s alcoholic ward in The Lost Weekend. He played Ernie Bishop, the friendly taxi driver in Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. Faylen’s career also stretched to television, playing long-suffering grocer Herbert T. Gillis on the 1950s television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. In 1968 he had a small part in the Barbra Streisand film Funny Girl. Faylen appeared in almost 200 films.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Frank Lovejoy

October 25, 2019

Frank Lovejoy was an American actor in radio, film, and television. He was born Frank Lovejoy Jr. in the Bronx, New York, but grew up in New Jersey. His father, Frank Lovejoy Sr., was a furniture salesman from Maine. His mother, Nora, was born in Massachusetts to Irish immigrant parents.

A successful radio actor, Lovejoy was heard on the 1930s crime drama series Gang Busters. Lovejoy was a narrator for the show This Is Your FBI. He played the title character on the syndicated The Blue Beetle during the 1940s, and starred in the later crime drama series Nightbeat in the early 1950s.

In films of the 1940s and 1950s, Lovejoy mostly played supporting roles. Appearing in movies such as Goodbye, My Fancy with Joan Crawford, Lovejoy was effective playing the movie’s everyman in extraordinary situations. He was in several war movies, notably Joseph H. Lewis’ Retreat, Hell! which portrayed the United States Marine Corps’ retreat from the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. In 1951, he had the title role in I Was a Communist for the FBI with co-stars Ron Hagerthy, Paul Picerni, and Philip Carey.

Lovejoy starred in two short-run TV series, Man Against Crime and Meet McGraw. Episodes of these two series have never been released commercially on DVD or VHS and never aired on reruns. Meet McGraw episodes were screened at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention.

25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

Frank Luther

October 25, 2019

Frank Luther was an American country music singer, dance band vocalist, playwright, songwriter and pianist.

Born Francis Luther Crow on a farm near Lakin, Kansas, forty miles from the Colorado line, he was raised on a farm near Hutchinson, Kansas, where his father, William R. Crow, and mother, Gertrude Phillips Crow, dealt in livestock and trotting horses. He began to study piano at age 6, improvising his own music when repetitious exercises bored him, and began vocal instruction at 13.

Three years later, he toured the Midwest as tenor with a quartet called The Meistersingers. He began studying at the University of Kansas, but attended a revival meeting conducted by Jesse Kellems and was so deeply impressed that he accepted an offer from the evangelist to become his musical director. During a subsequent stop in Iola, Kansas, young Crow himself was ordained, despite his never having studied for the ministry.

By 1921, the Reverend Francis Luther Crow was in the pulpit of the First Christian Church in Bakersfield, California. There, he organized a 30-voice children’s choir, an 80-voice adult choir, and two church orchestras. Writing and delivering his weekly sermons proved more problematic, and the Boy Preacher, as he was known locally, resigned to devote his creative energies to the world of music.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Television Permalink

Frank Morgan

October 25, 2019

Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.

Born as Francis Phillip Wuppermann in New York City, the youngest of eleven children, to the wealthy family that distributed Angostura bitters, he attended Cornell University where he was tapped into the New York Alpha Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, and through that organization was a member, Irving Literary Society. He then followed his older brother Ralph Morgan into show business, first on the Broadway stage and then into motion pictures.

His first film was The Suspect in 1916. In 1917 he provided support to his friend John Barrymore in Raffles The Amateur Cracksman, an independent film produced in and about New York City. Morgan’s career expanded when talkies began, his most stereotypical role being that of a befuddled but good-hearted middle-aged man. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1934’s The Affairs of Cellini, where he played the cuckolded Duke of Florence and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1942’s Tortilla Flat, where he played a simple Hispanic man.

Other movies of note include The Great Ziegfeld, The Shop Around the Corner, The Human Comedy, The Mortal Storm, The White Cliffs of Dover and his last movie, Key to the City, which was released after his death, in Beverly Hills, California.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording, Television 2 Comments Permalink

Frank Sinatra

October 25, 2019 2 Comments

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.

Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers." His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums. Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records, toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".

With sales of his music dwindling and after appearing in several poorly received films, Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971. Two years later, however, he came out of retirement and in 1973 recorded several albums, scored a Top 40 hit with " New York, New York" in 1980, and toured both within the United States and internationally, using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, until a short time before his death in 1998.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Francis X. Bushman

October 25, 2019

Francis Xavier Bushman was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. His matinee idol career started in 1911 in the silent film His Friend’s Wife, but it did not survive the silent screen era.

Bushman, like many of his contemporaries, broke into the film business via the stage. He was performing at Broncho Billy Anderson’s Essanay Studios in Chicago, Illinois, where he was first noticed for his muscular, sculpted frame. He appeared in nearly 200 feature film roles—more than 175 films before 1920, and 17 in his screen debut year of 1911 alone. He also worked for the Vitagraph studio before signing with Metro in 1915.

Bushman was born in Baltimore, Maryland. As a young man Bushman joined the Maryland Athletic Club and began a body building regiman that developed his muscular physique. He cited Sandow as one of his body building influences. In New York, he worked as a sculptor’s model often posing in the nude in sessions.

In 1902, Bushman married seamstress Josephine Fladune. By the launch of his film career, the couple had five children. In 1918, Bushman was the subject of a national scandal as his affair with longtime costar Beverly Bayne became public. Three days after his divorce with Josephine was final, Bushman and Bayne were married; they would eventually have a son. Bushman and his studios had kept his marriage secret for fear of losing popularity. He was married four times.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Frank Albertson

October 25, 2019

Frank Albertson was an American character actor who made his debut in a minor part in Hollywood at age 13.

Albertson made well over one hundred appearances in movies and television. He is probably best remembered for his role as Sam Wainwright, the businessman fond of saying “Hee-Haw” in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. He played the wealthy rancher, Tom Cassidy, at the start of Psycho, who provides the cash that Janet Leigh’s character later steals.

Albertson portrayed future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in the 1956 episode “Rough Rider” of CBS’s My Friend Flicka television series, starring Johnny Washbrook, Gene Evans, Anita Louise, and Frank Ferguson.