25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

William Fox

October 25, 2019

William Fox, born Vilmos Fried, was a pioneering American motion picture executive who founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain in the 1920s. Although Fox sold his interest in these companies in a 1936 bankruptcy settlement, his name lives on as the namesake of the Fox Television Network and the 20th Century Fox film studio. He was among the pioneers of the motion-picture and entertainment industry.

Fox was born Vilmos Fried in Tolcsva, Hungary, then part of Austria-Hungary. The house he was born in was identified in 2008. He came to America at the age of 9 months, where his name was anglicized to William Fox after his mother’s family name. He had many jobs starting at the age of 8. In 1900 he started his own company which he sold in 1904 to purchase his first nickelodeon. In 1915, he started Fox Film Corporation.

In 1925-26, Fox purchased the rights to the work of Freeman Harrison Owens, the U.S. rights to the Tri-Ergon system invented by three German inventors, and the work of Theodore Case to create the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system, introduced in 1927 with the release of F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise. Sound-on-film systems such as Movietone and RCA Photophone soon became the standard, and competing sound-on-disc technologies, such as Warner Brothers’ Vitaphone, fell into disuse. From 1928 to 1963, Fox Movietone News was one of the major newsreel series in the U.S., along with The March of Time and Universal Newsreel. In 1927, Marcus Loew, head of rival studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer died, and control of MGM passed to his longtime associate, Nicholas Schenck. Fox saw an opportunity to expand his empire, and in 1929, with Schenck’s assent, bought the Loew family’s holdings in MGM. However, MGM studio bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were outraged, since, despite their high posts in MGM, they were not shareholders. Mayer used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to sue Fox for violating federal antitrust law. During this time, in the middle of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had virtually wiped out his financial holdings, ending any chance of the Loews-Fox merger going through even if the Justice Department had given its blessing.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

William Frawley

October 25, 2019

William Clement Frawley was an American stage entertainer, screen and television actor. Although Frawley acted in over 100 films, he achieved his greatest fame playing landlord Fred Mertz for the situation comedy I Love Lucy.

William was born to Michael A. Frawley and Mary E. Brady in Burlington, Iowa. As a young boy, Bill attended Roman Catholic school and sang with the St. Paul’s Church choir. As he got older, he loved playing bit roles in local theater productions, as well as performing in amateur shows.

However, his mother, a religious woman, discouraged the idea.

William did two years of office work at Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha, Nebraska. He later relocated to Chicago and found a job as a court reporter. Soon thereafter, against his mother’s wishes, Frawley obtained a singing part in the musical comedy The Flirting Princess. To appease his mother, Bill relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, to work for another railroad company.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

William Dieterle

October 25, 2019

William Dieterle was a German actor and film director, who worked in Hollywood for much of his career.

He was born Wilhelm Dieterle, the youngest child of nine, to Jewish parents Jacob and Berthe Dieterle. As a child, he lived in considerable poverty and earned money by various means including carpentry and as a scrap dealer. He became interested in theater early and by the age of sixteen, he had joined a travelling theater company. His striking good looks and ambition soon paved the way as a leading romantic actor in theater productions. In 1919, he attracted the attention of Max Reinhardt in Berlin who hired him as an actor for his productions. He started acting in German films in 1921 to make more money and quickly became a popular character actor. He tired of acting quickly and wanted to direct.

He directed his first film in 1923, Der Mensch am Wege, which co-starred a young Marlene Dietrich, but he returned to acting for several years and appeared in such notable German films as Das Wachsfigurenkabinett and F.W. Murnau’s Faust. In 1927, Dieterle and his wife, Charlotte Hagenbruch, formed their own production company and returned to directing films, such as Sex in Chains in which he also played the lead role.

In 1930, Dieterle emigrated to the United States when he was offered a job in Hollywood to make German versions of American films; he became a citizen of the United States in 1937. He adapted quickly to Hollywood filmmaking and was soon directing original films. His first, The Last Flight, was a success and has been hailed as a forgotten masterpiece. Other films made during the 1930s include Jewel Robbery, Adorable, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Reinhardt, The Story of Louis Pasteur, The Life of Emile Zola, Juarez and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Recording Permalink

Will Rogers

October 25, 2019

William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers was a comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, actor,  Native American and member of the Cherokee Nation. He is one of the best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s.

Known as Oklahoma’s favorite son, Rogers was born to a prominent Indian Territory family. He traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies, wrote more than 4,000 nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, and became a world-famous figure. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was adored by the American people. He was the leading political wit of the Progressive Era, and was the top-paid movie star in Hollywood at the time. Rogers died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed near Barrow, Alaska.

His vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion, and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that was readily appreciated by a national audience, with no one offended. His short aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted; one example is his well-known quip, “I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

Rogers even provided an epigram on his most famous epigram:

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

William A. Wellman

October 25, 2019

William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation themes, a particular passion. He also directed several well regarded satirical comedies.

Wellman directed the 1927 film Wings, which became the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony.

Wellman’s father, Arthur Gouverneur Wellman, was a New England Brahmin of English-Welsh-Scottish and Irish descent. William was a great-great-great grandson of Francis Lewis of New York, one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. His much beloved mother was an Irish immigrant named Cecilia McCarthy.

Wellman was kicked out of Newton High School in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, for dropping a stink bomb on the principal’s head. Ironically, his mother was a probation officer who was asked to address Congress on the subject of juvenile delinquency. Wellman worked as a salesman and then at a lumber yard, before ending up playing professional ice hockey, which is where he was first seen by Douglas Fairbanks, who suggested that with Wellman’s good looks he could become a film actor.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

William Collier

October 25, 2019

William Collier, Jr. was an American film and stage actor who appeared in 89 films.

Collier was born as Charles F. Gal, Jr. in New York City. When his parents divorced, his mother married actor William Collier, Sr., who adopted Charles and gave the boy the new name William Collier Jr. Collier’s stage experience helped him to get his first movie role in 1916, The Bugle Call, at the age of 14.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

William Boyd

October 25, 2019

William Lawrence Boyd was an American film actor best known for portraying Hopalong Cassidy.

Boyd was born in Hendrysburg in Belmont County, located 26 miles east of Cambridge, Ohio. He was reared in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of day laborer Charles William Boyd and his wife, the former Lida Wilkens. Following his father’s death, he moved to California and worked as an orange picker, surveyor, tool dresser, and auto salesman. In Hollywood, he found extra work in films like Why Change Your Wife?. During World War I, he enlisted in the army but was exempted because of a “weak heart.” More prominent film roles followed, and he became famous as a leading man in silent film romances with a yearly salary of $100,000. He was the lead actor in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Volga Boatman and in D. W. Griffith’s Lady of the Pavements. Radio Pictures ended Boyd’s contract in 1931 when his picture was mistakenly run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor, William “Stage” Boyd, on gambling and liquor charges. Having been reckless with his money, Boyd was broke and without a job.

In 1935 he was offered the supporting role of Red Connors in the movie Hop-Along Cassidy, but asked to be considered for the title role and won it. The original Hopalong Cassidy character, written by Clarence E. Mulford for pulp fiction, was changed from a hard-drinking, rough-living wrangler to its eventual incarnation as a cowboy hero who did not smoke, drink or swear and who always let the bad guy start the fight. Although Boyd “never branded a cow or mended a fence, cannot bulldog a steer”, and disliked western music, he became indelibly associated with the Hopalong character and, like rival cowboy stars Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, gained lasting fame in the Western film genre. The Hopalong Cassidy series ended in 1947 after 66 films, with Boyd producing the last 12.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

William A. Seiter

October 25, 2019

William A. Seiter is an American film director. He was born in New York City. After attending Hudson River Military Academy, Seiter broke into films in 1915 as a bit player at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios, doubling a cowboy. He graduated to director in 1918.

At Universal Studios in the mid-1920s, Seiter was principal director of the popular Reginald Denny vehicles, most of which co-starred Seiter’s then wife Laura La Plante. This period also included The Beautiful and Damned and The Family Secret.

In the early talkie era, Seiter helped nurture the talents of RKO’s comedy duo Wheeler & Woolsey in such rollicking features as Caught Plastered and Diplomaniacs. He also directed the Laurel and Hardy feature Sons of the Desert, their only film together. Other films include Sunny, Going Wild, Kiss Me Again, Hot Saturday, Way Back Home, Girl Crazy, Rafter Romance, Roberta, Room Service, Susannah of the Mounties, Allegheny Uprising, You Were Never Lovelier, Up in Central Park, One Touch of Venus.

Among the many stars directed by Seiter during his long career were Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan, Jack Haley, Deanna Durbin, Jean Arthur, John Wayne, Fred MacMurray, Lucille Ball, Rita Hayworth and the Marx Brothers.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Willard Waterman

October 25, 2019

Willard Lewis Waterman was a character actor in films, TV and on radio, remembered best for succeeding Harold Peary as the title character of The Great Gildersleeve at the height of that show’s popularity.

Peary was unable to convince sponsor and show owner Kraft Cheese to allow him an ownership stake in the show. Impressed with better capital-gains deals CBS was willing to offer performers in the high-tax late 1940s, he decided to move from NBC to CBS during the latter’s famous talent raids. Kraft, however, refused to move the show to CBS and hired Waterman to replace Peary as the stentorian Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve.

Waterman attended the University of Wisconsin in the mid-1930s, where he acted in student plays and was a friend of Uta Hagen. He also began his radio career in Madison, and came to NBC in Chicago in early 1936. There he met and replaced Peary on The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters. Not only did the two men become longtime friends, but Waterman ? who actually looked as though he could have been Peary’s sibling, and whose voice was a near-match for Peary’s ? refused to appropriate the half-leering, half-embarrassed laugh Peary had made a Gildersleeve trademark. He stayed with The Great Gildersleeve from 1950 to 1957 on radio and in an ill-fated television version syndicated in 1955.

At the same time he was heard as Gildersleeve, Waterman had a recurring role as Mr. Merriweather in the short-lived but respected radio comedy vehicle for Ronald Colman and his wife Benita Hume, The Halls of Ivy. Waterman’s pre-Gildersleeve radio career, in addition to Tom Mix, had included at least one starring vehicle, a short-lived situation comedy, Those Websters, that premiered in 1945. He also had radio roles between the mid-1930s and 1950 on such shows as Chicago Theater of the Air and Harold Teen, plus four soap operas: Girl Alone, The Guiding Light, Lonely Women, The Road of Life and Kay Fairchild, Stepmother. He is also remembered for his role as Claude Upson in the 1958 film Auntie Mame.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

William Bendix

October 25, 2019

William Bendix was an American film, radio, and television actor, best remembered in movies for the title role in the movie The Babe Ruth Story and for portraying clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in radio and television’s The Life of Riley. He also received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for Wake Island. Bendix, named for his paternal grandfather, was born in Manhattan, New York City, the only son of Oscar Bendix and Hilda Bendix. As a youth in the early 1920s, Bendix was a batboy for the New York Yankees and said he saw Babe Ruth hit more than a hundred home runs at Yankee Stadium. In 1927, he married Theresa Stefanotti. Bendix worked as a grocer until the Great Depression.

Bendix began his acting career at age 30, by way of the New Jersey Federal Theater Project, and made his film debut in 1942. He played in supporting roles in dozens of Hollywood films, usually as a warm-hearted Marine, gangster or detective. He started with appearances in film noir films including a memorable performance in The Glass Key, which also featured Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. He soon gained more attention after appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat as Gus, a wounded and dying American sailor.

Bendix’s other well-known movie roles include his portrayal of baseball player Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story and Sir Sagramore opposite Bing Crosby in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, in which he took part in the famous trio, “Busy Doing Nothing”. He also played Nick the bartender in the 1948 film version of William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life starring James Cagney. Bendix had also appeared in the stage version, but in the role of Officer Krupp. In 1946 he was cast in The Blue Dahlia for the second time alongside Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.