25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Everett Mitchell

October 25, 2019

Everett Mitchell was an American gospel singer and radio innovator.

Growing up impoverished, Everett wore his sister’s hand-me-down shoes to school. When working as a child, Mitchell spent his first nickel to buy bread for his family. However, despite working several jobs and being part of the Quaker lineage, Mitchell became one of the great gospel singers. He had learned dozens of hymns at a very young age and was part of the church chorus. Gypsy Smith, a prominent evangelist, noticed Mitchell and hired him as a soloist for Smith’s revival service at Pacific Garden Mission in downtown Chicago. Mitchell continued his singing at Winona Lake for four summers.

After high school, Mitchell took a job as a clerk at First Trust and Savings Bank. There, he met Mildred, a bookkeeper, who later become his first wife. After getting married, both realized that their salaries could not support a family, so Mitchell worked at Continental Casualty Company as a claim adjustor while singing part-time at radio station WENR. When his supervisor at the insurance company found out about this, he told Mitchell either leave radio or be fired. Mitchell quit the company and never looked back.

Working full-time at WENR, he started singing classical music, gospel and jazz. For this, he became popular with the audience, a first in his radio career. One of his classic hits was “Letters to Santa Claus.” He was a guest on the late-night talk show, Bedtime Stories for Chorus Girls. He also made history by writing and delivering an early radio commercial, selling Christmas trees by the thousands.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Everett Sloane

October 25, 2019

Everett Sloane was an American stage, film and television actor, songwriter, and theatre director.

Born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York, Sloane attended the University of Pennsylvania before dropping out in order to join a theater company, but he stopped acting and became a runner on Wall Street after a number of negative stage reviews. After the stock market crash in 1929, he decided to return to the theater.

Sloane eventually joined Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre, and acted in Welles’s films in roles such as Citizen Kane ‘s Bernstein in 1941 and The Lady from Shanghai‘s Arthur Bannister in 1948.

Sloane’s Broadway theatre career began with the comedy Boy Meets Girl in 1945 and ended with From A to Z, a revue for which he wrote several songs, in 1960. In-between he acted in plays such as Native Son, A Bell for Adano, and Room Service and directed the melodrama The Dancer .

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Ezio Pinza

October 25, 2019

Ezio Pinza was an Italian basso opera singer with a rich, smooth and sonorous voice. He spent 22 seasons at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas. Pinza also sang to great acclaim at La Scala, Milan, and at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden.

After retiring from the Met in 1948, Pinza enjoyed a fresh career on Broadway in the musical theatre and appeared, too, in several Hollywood films.

Pinza was born in modest circumstances in Rome in 1892 and grew up on Italy’s east coast, in the ancient city of Ravenna. He studied singing at Bologna’s Conservatorio Martini, making his operatic debut in 1914, as Oroveso in Norma at Cremona.

A devotee of bicycle riding, Pinza also undertook four years of military service during World War I, prior to resuming his operatic career in Rome in 1919. He was then invited to sing at Italy’s foremost opera house, La Scala, Milan, making his debut there in February 1922. At La Scala, under the direction of the brilliant and exacting principal conductor Arturo Toscanini, Pinza’s career blossomed during the course of the next few seasons. He became a popular favourite of critics and audiences due to the high quality of his singing and the attractiveness of his stage presence.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Ezra Stone

October 25, 2019

Ezra Stone was an American actor and director who had a long career on the stage, in films, radio, and television, mostly as a director. His most notable role as an actor was that of the awkwardly mischievous teenager Henry Aldrich in the radio comedy hit, The Aldrich Family, for most of its fourteen-year run.

Born Ezra Chaim Feinstone in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Stone studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began his professional career on stage in the mid-1930s, when he was first tapped to play Henry Aldrich in the Clifford Goldsmith play, What a Life. Goldsmith then brought Henry and his family to sketches for popular radio series featuring singers Rudy Vallee and Kate Smith, before the sketches’ popularity moved NBC to give Goldsmith a chance to develop a full half-hour comedy as a summer replacement for Jack Benny in 1938.

By 1939, The Aldrich Family had become a hit series in its own right; Katherine Raht’s opening bellow and Stone’s adenoidal reply, fashioned at first by Kate Smith’s director Bob Welsh, became the show’s instant trademarks. House Jameson played stern but affectionate father Sam Aldrich.

In one way, the show and its star were deceptive, according to radio historian Gerald Nachman: like Fanny Brice, who played five- or six-year-old Baby Snooks for over two decades, Ezra Stone didn’t exactly resemble a clumsy teenager, either.

25 Oct 2019
Live Performance Permalink

Fabian Anthony Forte

October 25, 2019

Fabian Anthony Forte, known as Fabian, is an American teen idol of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He rose to national prominence after performing several times on American Bandstand. In total, he charted 11 hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100.

Fabian was born the son of Josephine and Domenic Forte. His father was a policeman. Fabian was discovered in 1957 by Bob Marcucci and Peter DeAngelis, owners of Chancellor Records. At the time, record producers were looking to the South Philadelphia neighborhoods in search of teenage talents with good looks, and Frankie Avalon, also of South Philly, suggested Fabian as a possibility.

Fabian was the oldest of three brothers, and with his father ill and unable to work, he hoped to earn enough for his family. At fifteen, Fabian won the Silver Award as "The Promising Male Vocalist of 1958."

With songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Fabian released a series of hit singles for Chancellor Records including "I'm a Man", "Hound Dog Man", a #9 hit in the U.S., "Turn Me Loose", and his biggest hit, "Tiger", which reached number 3 in the U.S. charts. Other singles that charted included "String Along", "About This Thing Called Love" and "This Friendly World", which reached #12 on the U.S. charts.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Eugene Pallette

October 25, 2019

Eugene William Pallette was an American actor. He appeared in over 240 silent era and sound era motion pictures between 1913 and 1946.

An overweight man with large stomach and deep, gravelly voice, Pallette is probably best-remembered for comic character roles such as Alexander Bullock, Carole Lombard’s father, in My Man Godfrey, his role as Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn and his similar role as Fray Felipe in The Mark of Zorro starring Tyrone Power.

He was born in Winfield, Kansas, the son of William Baird Pallette and Elnora “Ella” Jackson. His sister was Beulah L. Pallette. Pallette attended Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana. He then began his acting career on the stage in stock company roles, appearing for a period of six years.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Eva Gabor

October 25, 2019

Eva Gabor was a Hungarian-born socialite and actress. She was best known for her role on Green Acres as Lisa Douglas, the wife of Eddie Albert's character, Oliver Wendell Douglas, and as a voice actor in three Walt Disney Pictures animated feature films The Aristocats, The Rescuers, and its sequel The Rescuers Down Under. Gabor had success as an actress in film, Broadway and television. Her elder sisters, Zsa Zsa Gabor and the late Magda Gabor, were also actresses and socialites.

Born as Éva Gábor in Budapest, the last daughter of Vilmos Gábor, a soldier, and Jolie Gábor. She was a Roman Catholic. Eva was the first Gabor sister to emigrate to the United States. She moved with her first husband, Swedish physician, Dr. Eric Drimmer. Her first movie role was a bit part in Forced Landing at Paramount Pictures. She acted in movies and on the stage throughout the 1950s. In 1965, she commenced her best known role in the TV sitcom Green Acres, a Paul Henning production in which she portrayed Lisa Douglas, the New York wife of Oliver Wendell Douglas played by Eddie Albert who left New York City to live on a farm. This was a hit show for six seasons, ending in 1971.

In later years, she did notable voice-over work for Disney movies, providing the European-accented voices of Duchess in The Aristocats, Miss Bianca in The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under, and the Queen of Time in the Sanrio film, Nutcracker Fantasy.

She was also a successful businesswoman marketing the "Eva Gabor Wigs" and "The Eva Gabor Look".

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Eva Marie Saint

October 25, 2019

Eva Marie Saint is an American actress who has starred in films, on Broadway, and on television in a career spanning seven decades. Saint won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in On the Waterfront, and later starred in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller North by Northwest. She received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for A Hatful of Rain and won an Emmy Award for the miniseries People Like Us. Her film career also includes roles in Raintree County, Because of Winn-Dixie, and Superman Returns. Saint was born in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of Eva Marie and John Merle Saint. She attended Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, New York, graduating in 1942. Eva Marie was inducted into the high school's hall of fame in 2006. She studied acting at Bowling Green State University, while a member of Delta Gamma Sorority. There is a theater on Bowling Green's campus named for her. She was an active member in the theater honorary fraternity, Theta Alpha Phi.

Saint's introduction to television began as an NBC page. In the late 1940s, she began doing extensive work in radio and television before winning the Drama Critics Award for her Broadway stage role in the Horton Foote play The Trip to Bountiful, in which she co-starred with such formidable actors as Lillian Gish and Jo Van Fleet. In 1955, she was nominated for her first Emmy for "Best Actress In A Single Performance" on The Philco Television Playhouse for playing the young mistress of middle-aged E. G. Marshall in Middle of the Night by Paddy Chayefsky. She won another Emmy nomination for the 1955 television musical version of the Thornton Wilder classic play Our Town with co-stars Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra. Her success and acclaim were of such a high level that the young Saint earned the nickname "the Helen Hayes of television."

Saint's first feature motion picture role was in On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando – a performance for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her role as Edie Doyle, which she won over such leading contenders as Claire Trevor, Nina Foch, Katy Jurado, and Jan Sterling also earned her a British Academy of Film and Television Award nomination for "Most Promising Newcomer." In his New York Times review, film critic Bosley Crowther wrote:

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Television Permalink

Eve Arden

October 25, 2019

Eve Arden was an American actress. Her almost 60-year career crossed most media frontiers with supporting and leading roles, but she is perhaps best remembered for playing the sardonic but engaging high school teacher in the classic Our Miss Brooks, and as the Rydell High School principal in the films Grease and Grease 2.

Arden was born Eunice M. Quedens in Mill Valley, California, to Lucille and Charles Peter Quedens. Her parents divorced when she was a child. She was raised Catholic. Arden said she was an insecure child, declaring later in life that she needed therapy because her mother was so much more beautiful than she.

At 16, Arden left Tamalpais High School and joined a stock theater company. She made her film debut, under her real name, in the backstage musical Song of Love. She played a wisecracking showgirl who becomes a rival to the film’s star, singer Belle Baker. The film was one of Columbia Pictures’ earliest successes.

Eve Arden’s Broadway debut came in 1934, when she was cast in that year’s Ziegfeld Follies revue.